Finnish translation + Debian <-> Ubuntu

[Dafydd Harries]

Ar 15/11/2004 am 14:11, ysgrifennodd Timo Jyrinki:
> Dafydd Harries wrote:
> 
> >>that some parts have been translated into Swedish! Although Finland is 
> >>a bi-lingual country, not everyone is good enough at Swedish to be 
> >>able to understand those messages. This is something that needs 
> >>fixing.
> >I suggest you file bugs in the Ubuntu bug tracking system for the
> >programs which have this problem. If you do this, please email the list
> >with the numbers of the bugs you have filed. That way, people on the
> >list who are interested can CC themselves to those bugs.
> 
> The bug ("sv" in /etc/environment, removing it fixes the wrong fallback
> language) was recently introduced in Debian when someone just was too 
> hasty making changes (it's easy to forget that Finnish has nothing to do
> with Swedish, unlike Danish or Norwegian), and has since been fixed. 
> Unfortunately the fix didn't make it to Warty.

Ah, that's a shame.

> This brings me to a point that is probably interesting to many: how well 
> will translation-related changes in Debian be imported to Ubuntu? If 
> something is fixed in Debian in say two months from now, will it get
> in Hoary? I mean mainly the installer, which is Ubuntu-customized version
> of debian-installer.

That's a good question, and I'm not sure I have a good answer to it. Of
course, Ubuntu should take advantage of translation work done in Debian.

I suspect it will go something like this:

 - Translations will get updated when we pull installer code from
   Debian.

 - We should consider extra synchronisation of translation work after
   the freeze. I'm not sure how to make this process reliable.

This is a good example of why it is good to work with other translators:
rather than working directly from the Ubuntu installer's PO files which
might be out of date, it's better to coordinate with debian-installer
translators to avoid duplication of work.

> If translations from Debian-installer are done from time to time (and 
> then search-replacing Debian with Ubuntu), is there some freeze for it?
> I mean that at least in the case of Finnish, blindly replacing Debian
> with Ubuntu is not enough because of different suffixes that might be
> used with the words.

Yes, naive search-and-replace is problematic. Translation should be done
by translators. :)

Translating Ubuntu-specific translations is always a good idea, and one
which must be done within Ubuntu -- we can't coordinate with upstream or
Debian here.

-- 
Dafydd