Fwd: Ensuring Quality in Ubuntu Translations

Tis Apr 11 11:30:49 BST 2006

Tack Daniel för att du uppmärksammade problemet - jag tenderar att läsa 
meddelandena i rosetta-users-listan väldigt slarvigt. :/

Eftersom jag missade Ubuntu Sverige-mötet den 28:e mars (då godkännande 
av översättare diskuterades) lägger jag till en punkt på dagordningen 
inför kommande möte. Jag vill gärna vara med och diskutera den här 
problematiken.

/ bon

Daniel Nylander skrev:
> Jag vidarebefordrar ett meddelande som skickades till Rosetta-users-listan.
> Detta gäller i *hög grad* även Ubuntu-se.
> 
> Jag anser att kvaliteten på de översättningar som görs på Rosetta är
> undermålig. Den följer inte alltid den jargon som normalt sett används,
> den korrekturläses för dåligt, den godkänns inte av någon auktoritär osv.
> 
> Ett annat problem är att alla kastar sig över diverse översättningar
> utan att veta något om dem (vilka termer som används) eller om
> översättningen redan är gjord (av upstream). Det värsta av allt är att
> de översättningar som görs i Rosetta endast kommer Ubuntu-användare till
> användning, med andra ord kommer samma översättningsjobb att behöva
> göras via upstream.
> 
> Hur kan vi göra detta bättre? Diskutera gärna.
> 
> Danne
> 
> -------- Ursprungligt meddelande --------
> Ämne: Ensuring Quality in Ubuntu Translations
> Datum: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:14:31 +0100
> Från: Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com>
> Svar till: mdke at ubuntu.com
> Till: rosetta-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Kopia: loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com
> 
> Sorry for the length of this email, I kinda wrote it as a blog post so
> it's a bit more wordy that I'd like.
> 
> An interesting discussion on the #launchpad irc channel yesterday has
> been making me think about the question of quality assurance for Ubuntu
> translation teams. To put the question into context, this is how the
> discussion arose:
> 
> An upstream GNOME translator for the Dutch language mentioned that often
> there are complaints on their mailing list about the quality of
> translations of the GNOME desktop environment for Ubuntu. He says that
> these flame wars are particularly irritating given that the translations
> complained of are not made by GNOME translators at all, but are
> introduced by the Ubuntu translation team, overwriting the upstream
> translations. One of the Ubuntu translation team joined the
> conversation, and it became clear that there was very little QA going on
> to ensure that the members of the Dutch team are (a) good translators,
> and (b) familiar with the GNOME and other upstream translation
> guidelines.
> 
> Thanks to the two Dutch guys who made a lot of good points, some of
> which I've stolen in this post.
> 
> This is a topic which has particularly interested me recently because
> the Italian translation group has been debating this question over the
> last few months, and has evolved a quality assurance technique to try
> and prevent this problem from happening. Also, I think this problem is
> not just with the Dutch team, but is likely to be common. I'd be
> interested to hear whether anyone else has experienced problems like
> this.
> 
> Basically, my view is that the blame for this problem lies partly with
> Rosetta, and partly with the translation teams themselves. In reverse
> order:
> 
> = Translation Teams =
> 
> The basic starting point is that a central part of the Ubuntu
> philosophy[1] is that software should be available to all in their local
> language.
> 
> [1] http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy
> 
> In order to achieve this, Ubuntu has given a lot of authority (and
> responsibility) to the various translation teams that exist in
> Launchpad[2]: these teams are responsible for what the operating system
> looks like, because the translations which they enter in Rosetta will
> eventually go into the operating system.
> 
> [2] https://launchpad.net/people/?name=ubuntu-l10n&searchfor=teamsonly
> 
> This is a lot of responsibility for the translation teams. It is clear
> that randomly accepting any new member to a team can result in bad
> translations. It seems that in the case of the Dutch team it has had
> really bad consequences. I refuse to believe that this problem doesn't
> exist elsewhere. For example, the Ubuntu French translation team has 250
> members (and 1 administrator to approve/disprove new candidates!!), the
> German team 86, the Brazilian team 78, etc. It's difficult to imagine
> that these members have all been through some kind of quality assurance.
> 
> Upstream translators on the other hand _do_ go through rigorous quality
> assurance. Translations are uploaded to (e.g. GNOME) CVS if the
> translator is already well known for good quality translation, or
> alternatively if the individual translation is checked first.
> 
> So how can Ubuntu translation teams do similar quality assurance? This
> is where teams should share their experiences, in my view. So here is
> what the Italian team does:
>  * When a new member applies to join, he's asked to join the mailing
> list and write a mail of presentation
>  * In order to be admitted to the group, the member goes through the
> following (relatively informal) process: 1. sign the code of conduct, 2.
> create a wiki page on the italian wiki with contact details, 3. read the
> upstream translation project guidelines, and the GNOME translation
> guidelines, 4. begin translating in rosetta by submitting "suggestions".
>  * When the proposed member has done #3 above, an existing member of the
> group checks the suggestions the proposed member has submitted. If they
> are ok, the proposed member becomes a real member.
> 
> Now, this process may not work for every team. Some teams have lots of
> people, others not so many. Equally, this process is by no means perfect
> (I'd be very interested to hear what other teams do). It's up to each
> team to figure out what quality assurance system works for them.
> However, a quality assurance system IS necessary, if the problems like
> those experienced in the Dutch team are to be avoided.
> 
> What concrete proposals could assist here? I'd suggest that some common
> "translator group guidelines" would do some good. But it's a very big
> job to "reform" existing groups, both in terms of the amount of work,
> and the delicacy of the social problems (it's important to get the
> balance right between encouraging inclusive participation, and quality
> assurance). However, if groups set up well thought out mechanisms for
> quality assurance, I feel convinced that it is a job which can be
> successfully carried out.
> 
> = Rosetta =
> 
> There are lots of ways in which Rosetta can and should help this QA
> process, in my opinion. They are all fairly well known bugs, I think.
> But they are important ones.
> 
> The first is technical. It is not nearly as easy to check a proposed
> member's translations as it should be. This is a oft-cited bug in
> Rosetta. It should be possible to go to a person's profile, and view
> each suggestion that person has made for a translation. At the moment,
> it is only possible to view which template the person has contributed
> to, and then you have to go through all the untranslated strings for
> that template, and look for the person's name. Not very convenient.
> 
> The second is technical too. You can't search a package for a particular
> string, which means that if you see a bad translation, it's harder to
> fix. Worse than that, once a translation is committed, there is no
> obvious way of seeing who committed the translation, so people who are
> not following guidelines cannot be approached to discuss the problem.
> 
> The third is technical and social. It would be a bad thing to make
> upstream translations take precedence over Ubuntu translations (because
> then it would be impossible to correct mistakes upstream, or alter a
> translation where the context is slightly different in Ubuntu), but most
> of the problems are caused by the fact that upstream translations are
> not currently imported quickly enough into Rosetta. This results in
> Ubuntu translators translating strings which they otherwise would not
> touch, if the upstream translations were already there. Earlier
> importing of upstream translations would save much of the pain that
> Dutch Ubuntu users have experienced, I'll guess. (The social aspect of
> this is that Ubuntu translation teams should AVOID translating until
> they know that all upstream translations have been imported).
> 
> The fourth is purely social. The main reason that translation groups
> don't do QA is that they are not aware of this need. Given that Ubuntu
> has given the translator groups this immense responsibility, it is their
> duty (and by implication, that of Rosetta/Launchpad) to make them aware
> of it. New teams and team owners/administrators should be made aware of
> the importance of assuring quality translations in the distribution. The
> other reason that Rosetta needs to take on this social task is that
> Rosetta really does make translation very very easy indeed, which rocks.
> However, it's vital to ensure that "easy" doesn't equate to "sloppy".
> 
> = Conclusion =
> 
> My conclusion is that Rosetta helps to go half way towards fulfilling
> the promise in Ubuntu's philosophy of making the operating system
> available to users in their local language. However, now for the hard
> bit: making the operating system available to users in their local
> language and _professional_ at the same time. In order to do this,
> translation teams need to put quality assurance in place and Rosetta
> needs to help them to do this.
> 
> Matt
> 