Improving Rosetta's relation with upstream translation teams

[Danilo Šegan]

Hi TG,

Today at 4:33, TG wrote:

> The fallowing was a request i made on 16th aug. I don't know how the
> priorities are set. But as far as our team is concerned this feature
> should get the highest priority. This problem may not be felt by the
> "bigger teams". The bigger refers to the number of strings translated.
> But it is the smaller teams that face the bigger problems. And when
> prioritizing this should be taken in to consideration.

I like the ideas you are having.  We do want to implement something
like that, but it's not coming soon (i.e. this would require changes
to many places in the code, so it's not actually trivial).

What Matthew is proposing, and what I also had in mind earlier, was to
simply add "novice translator" as the privilege level.  That one is
simpler and would solve majority of the problems we are having
(translators feeling unappreciated if they are not part of the team,
or them messing up the translation work if they are).

> ====
> I was wondering if it would be possible to implement a system to rate
> registered translators so that to differentiate between seasoned
> translators who not only can submit their own translations but have
> the privilege to review and approve and the novice translators. say
> "novice translator", "translator", "reviewer", "super translator
> (commitor)":-). This would solve many of the issues raised here and
> elsewhere on organizing a translation work. Points can be given from
> the higher rated to the lower rated translator or the system gives
> points on the number of translations approved without change...etc.
>
> Today most translation work is static revolving around single
> individuals. This method undoubtedly has an advantage of insuring
> quality in a very restrictive manner. But it also shuts out potential
> contributors on subjective grounds, such as personality clash. this
> might not be big problem for an already supported languages. But
> unsupported languages and languages yet to start will use as much
> volunteers and dynamism in the system as they can get.
> The meritocracy practised elsewhere in free software development
> should also be applied to translation work too.
> ====

Cheers,
Danilo