Is Aptitude upstream?

[Danilo Šegan]

Hi Khaled,

У нед, 01. 08 2010. у 19:03 +0300, Khaled Hosny пише:
> On Sun, Aug 01, 2010 at 11:38:01PM +0800, Arne Goetje wrote:
> > 
> > In general, you should translate any template where translations are 
> > still missing, no matter if they come from upstream or they are native 
> > to Ubuntu.
> 
> I think this is a very bad advice actually, we are not helping better
> localisation by wasting time doing downstream translations that are very
> unlikely to be used upstream. We should instead encourage Ubuntu
> translators to communicate with upstream projects to reach a common
> background. For example, though packages in Ubuntu might be slightly
> older than current upstream releases, usually the differences are
> minimal that it is very easy to translate the latest version upstream
> then "backport" it to the version in Ubuntu and then fix any
> differences.

I tend to disagree: Launchpad is slightly more powerful tool for
translation that what upstreams usually offer, and allows for more
collaboration (i.e. it's easy for someone to just fix a typo and submit
that for review).  Thus, it is very nice to translate in Launchpad and
then submit your translations upstream.  Benefits of working in
Launchpad directly is that users will see translations sooner (they get
packaged in Ubuntu), and nobody really loses anything as long as you
submit them upstream.

This means that there won't be any wasted effort either: you'd just be
working in a different direction.  However, you'd get the benefit of a
bigger pool of contributors Launchpad has over many upstreams, and that
should help you get over the "limited resources" hump.

The "waste" can happen if it happens that there's a very active upstream
translator who might do the translation at the same time.  But nothing
can help with that much: this can happen in an upstream team itself if
they are not communicating between themselves.  So, you've got to talk
to them to coordinate (i.e. an email to an upstream translation team
list saying "I am translating this" should be enough).

FWIW, we are working on tools in Launchpad that will enable this process
to be even smoother for both directions.

>  This means with next upstream sync, the difference will be
> zero to very minimal.

The next upstream sync, atm, might not really happen in any foreseeable
future (if ever).  For instance, do you keep GNOME 2.22 translations
updated upstream?  Yet, Hardy is a LTS and still supported on the
desktop, and there are many installations still using it.  You can
choose to get translations to these users if you translate Hardy
directly in Launchpad (see below).

>  Most translation teams are underpowered unpaid
> volunteers, we need to manage those limited resources for the greater
> benefit, not wasting time redoing translations and re-reviewing
> translations.

Launchpad should help there as well: it can be used to attract more
contributors, and it saves some work.  For instance, with our
translations sharing feature, you don't have to do the same work twice.
Even while you are just updating translations in Lucid, if that package
hasn't changed much since Hardy and yet was untranslated in it, Hardy
will also get the benefit! So, you don't have to specifically work on
Hardy to make the best use of these Launchpad features, and users of
your translation will get more benefit.

Of course, there are also areas were Launchpad is a bit behind on
regular translation processes, but we are working on improving them as
well.

Cheers,
Danilo