Ensuring Quality in Ubuntu Translations
Robin Sonefors
ozamosi at blinkenlights.se
Tis Apr 11 12:16:46 BST 2006
Jag håller inte med - det finns redan ordlistor, det är inte det som är
problemet. Problemet är att det finns vissa medlemmar som inte läser
dess, alternativt inte vet om dem. Ett nästan ännu större problem är att
många är ivriga och vill hjälpa till innan - precis som det citerade
mailet säger - översättningarna från gnome importerats. Då blir
översättningarna sällan lika välskrivna som gnomes översättningar, och
inte alltid ens färdiga, och gnomes översättningar fastnar utanför
rosetta, eftersom en ubuntuöversättare rankas högre än en
gnomeöversättare (av de skälen Matthew East beskriver).
Jag kan personligen säga att det var komplett idioti att godkänna mig
när jag godkändes - jag hade översatt ca 20 strängar när jag blev
godkänd. Idag tycker jag att jag översätter bättre, men jag vet att min
stavning ibland inte är så jättebra, och när jag ser vissa av mina gamla
översättningar skäms jag nästan (vi får hoppas att jag inte säger samma
sak om ett år ;) ). Problemet var att det inte fanns någon van
översättare involverad i översättningarna då - Nafallo var svensk och
ubuntuintresserad, därför blev han översättaransvarig i princip. Ingen
av de godkända översättarna kände (vad jag vet) ens till andra
översättarlag. Idag är LadyFrost administratör, men hon har egentligen
ingen större översättarvana heller, och att det är tämligen korkat att
ha henne som ensam administratör (hennes ord, inte mina).
Jag har nämnt förut, och jag säger det igen, att det jag ser som den
ultimata metoden är att en väldigt liten skara personer som skriver
översättningar av hög kvalitet kan se diffar över översättningar andra
lämnat, och kan enkelt godkänna eller avslå (eller fixa till något, och
sedan godkänna) dessa. Tyvärr stödjer inte launchpad det, varpå det blir
omöjligt.
Det vi beslöt senaste mötet var att en översättare ska
1. ha läst introduktionen för översättare på ubuntu-se.org.
2. ha hittat ett program som ej är översatt, och ej översätts av någon
annan översättargrupp
3. ha översatt det programmet helt och hållet, och skickat en .po-fil
till ladyfrost
4. vara medlem på den här maillistan.
tis 2006-04-11 klockan 09:56 +0200 skrev No1Viking:
> Hej
>
> Synd att ordlistan inte kommer att bli verklighet, som det ser ut nu.
> Då hade vi haft en liten chans att få översättningarna något synkade.
>
> Micke
>
>
> On 4/11/06, Daniel Nylander <info at danielnylander.se> wrote:
> 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
> --
> mdke at ubuntu.com
> gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
>
>
>
> --
> ubuntu-se mailing list
> ubuntu-se at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-se
>
>
>
>
More information about the ubuntu-se
mailing list