Translation status for ubuntu-docs

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/3/26 Jeremy Bicha <jbicha at ubuntu.com>:
> I uploaded the potfile for ubuntu-docs tonight and opened up
> translations on Launchpad for the precise branch.

What about the ubuntu-docs under /ubuntu/precise/+source/ubuntu-docs -
it'll be updated at the time of actual upload?

For future, do you think that ubuntu-docs under the Ubuntu
translations should simply be not visible until the final template is
uploaded? Or this current system still better? I think one of the
biggest invisible problems in Ubuntu translations making people go
away (if they notice it) is the fact that work is wasted. Most of the
people translating do not know that probably a lot of their
translations will not be used if they've been translating ubuntu-docs
in the last month or so, or even this coming week.

This would not be such a big problem it is today without being
combined with the lack of supporting fuzzy strings in LP. Then when
the docs team do a cleanup of commas, articles or word orders (I'd
assume there is always a bunch of those in addition to total
rewrites), quality translations that would still have a lot value
(either 100% match or something easily fixed to match the new form)
are being lost. This is especially big problem in ubuntu-docs, since
it has long strings, and a single small change anywhere will always
reset a big amount of translated text compared to application UI texts
that are usually much shorter.

With the new precise ubuntu-docs template, I see that while the total
number of strings have stayed roughly the same (+100 strings), the
number of untranslated strings have raised from 358 to 1086. What I
personally will do is:
- now very quickly save the current Ubuntu precise's ubuntu-docs PO file
- when the new ubuntu-docs gets to precise proper, fuzzy match the
downloaded PO file to the new template manually with gettext tools
- in case of simple word order / punctuation / etc changes simply
unfuzzy or make a little fix in the translation
- upload the new PO with "saved" translations back to Launchpad

But I'd estimate that not many of the languages have the luck of
someone doing this work. In the other language teams, there might be
frustrated people noticing that the hard work they've done
(translating ubuntu-docs is really hard work since there is so much of
it) has for a part disappeared.

Not that this would be a new problem of course, but what do you think
about the template hiding idea or do you have any other ideas to help
this problem (other than contributing to LP code)?

-Timo