How to revert to upstream translations

[Jeroen Vermeulen]

Milo Casagrande wrote:

> I just quote from last Danilo message regarding this aspect:
> 
>> Launchpad Translations has changed the translation precedence policy
>> with the December release: now upstream ("packaged") translations will
>> be given more priority in specific cases. Yet, Launchpad Translations
>> keeps the ability to override any specific upstream translation if so
>> is
>> desired.

Thanks Milo for bringing this quote in.  To be clear:

1. If the currently selected translation for a message in Launchpad is 
the one that was last imported from upstream, then that message will 
"track" upstream.  So if a later import from upstream changes the 
translation, Launchpad will also use that new translation.  This has 
always(1) been the case.

2. If the Ubuntu translation team has chosen to diverge from the 
upstream translation, then the translation in Launchpad overrides the 
upstream translation.  It continues doing so until either the Ubuntu 
translation or upstream decides to use the same text as the other. 
That's why translation teams should do this only if the upstream 
translation is buggy, or requires an Ubuntu-specific translation 
different from the upstream one.  Launchpad/Rosetta has no way of 
guessing the team's reasons.  For the "buggy" case, of course the 
translation team would do well to report to upstream.

3. The situation Danilo is referring to is this one: upstream does not 
translate a particular message, but Launchpad does.  Then, upstream does 
add a translation of its own for that message, and the new translation 
is imported.  In this case Launchpad does guess the reason why it had a 
different translation than upstream: because upstream didn't have one. 
And so it switches to tracking the upstream translation in this case.

It's this last part that's new(2).


Jeroen

(1) Well, I happen to know it wasn't the case during the late 
Pleistocean, for example, but grant me some artistic license here.
(2) To put this in perspective: the late Pleistocean is very old.  This 
feature came more sort of late 2008-ish.