Localisation of help.ubuntu.com

[Kenneth Nielsen]

2011/5/3 Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com>:
> On 3 May 2011 12:50, David Planella <david.planella at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> El dt 03 de 05 de 2011 a les 10:43 +0100, en/na Matthew East va
>> escriure:
>>> > And once more, now that the server guide will only be available online
>>> > and on PDF, I'd like to bring up the subject of enabling translations on
>>> > help.ubuntu.com, as otherwise only the English version will be
>>> > available. Translators and LoCos keep asking for this, and I'll be more
>>> > than happy to help in anything I can in that regard.
>>>
>>> Each time we discuss this it seems to stall. I've repeatedly set out
>>> my reasons why I think that local team websites should be encouraged
>>> to provide localised help rather than help.ubuntu.com, and I've
>>> repeatedly said that I'm interested in hearing what translators and
>>> local team leaders think about it - but the discussion never seems to
>>> get further than that. See for example:
>>>
>>
>> Translators: we've talked about it at UDS and on the list in the past.
>> May I ask those of you who'd like to see a localized help.ubuntu.com
>> instead of having localized team websites to host the localized content
>> state your reasons on this thread?
>>
>> This will be very useful in bringing the discussion forward.
>
> Actually, it would be better as a separate thread. It's a bit
> off-topic for this one. I'm changing the subject here accordingly.

Ahh crap. Now I've just responded to two other thread on the subject. I short:
* Better quality of the documentation (since the source is of high quality)
* Up-to-dateness
* Less overall work ;) for website maintainers
* More likely that translator work will keep being used (there are
plenty of documentations out there to translate, so the trick is
finding one that you are sure will keep being maintained ;))

For the explanations I'll just paste from the other emails:

FROM Andrejs thread:
Hallo

I whole-heartedly agree with this idea and the arguments presented by
Andrej. As a translator I'm always looking for ways to ensure that my
work remains relevant and benefits many people. Letting localized
documentation be a translation of the official English documentation
will increase quality, ensure that it is kept up-to-date and decrease
duplicate work, that's a win-win-win kind of thing.

To improve the user experience I would furthermore impose a
restriction, such that only languages where more than 95-98% percent
of the documentation is localized is discoverable on the website.

The only possible problem I can think of with this idea (besides the
work involved in making the website localizable) is if Canonical wants
to have some way to ensure a certain quality of the documentation
(including the localizations), since if the work is based purely on
volunteers there really is no way to ensure that. It is the same
problem faced right now with the translation of Ubuntu Pay.

Regards Kenneth Nieslen (TLE)

FROM original thread:
I have not yet discussed this with the Danish team, but I'm pretty
sure that they will also love the idea making the website
translatable. (Also see argumentation in the thread started by
Andrej). From a purely resource perspective, we reduce the amount of
pure maintenance work needed by almost (n-1)*(work needed to maintain
a website)* where n is the amount of languages willing to work on
localized documentation. Every manager has got to love that.
Furthermore the arguments of up-to-dateness (see other thread) are
also important.

Regards Kenneth Nielsen

* Almost, because the work required to maintain a localizable website
is surely a little higher than maintaining a single language website.

Regards Kenneth Nielsen