Translation status for ubuntu-docs

[Timo Jyrinki]

2012/3/26 David Planella <david.planella at ubuntu.com>:
> In terms of hiding the template until freeze is in place, I'd personally
> recommend against that. I realize docs are a very special type of
> translation, as translations themselves are harder to do than in shorter
> strings, and as small changes in the sources mean a higher amount of
> work in retranslation than regular UI translations.
>
> The main reason why I'm against hiding templates is consistency: we show
> translation templates for all of the rest very early in the cycle, so
> that actual translations can be tested as soon as possible. A few years
> back we used to open translations relatively late in the development
> process, but at some point translators requested to have them open
> earlier, so now we tend to do it around alpha time, at the same time the
> first language packs are rolled out.

I understand, and also agree. If thinking about the specific case
here, your other suggestion would help here a bit:

> - Keep the POT file in upstream and Ubuntu in sync.

I think the last template update and upload on the Ubuntu side was on
February 5th. Had there been some middle point upload between that and
now, the upcoming change in Ubuntu translations would have been
somewhat smaller. I don't know if the upstream LP templates were
updated between early February and now this update, but if not,
possibly there was some point at which some portion of the
documentation updates was finished and could have been offered for
translation earlier together with an Ubuntu upload.

That said, I did an about hour's job merging the current Ubuntu
translations (old template) into the new ubuntu-docs upstream
translation template, starting with msgmerge output. I unfuzzied a lot
as is, ie. I didn't notice anything changed in the English string that
would have an effect on the translation, and also unfuzzied a lot with
eg. one word changes. There were for example a lot of even long
strings with the only change "top panel" -> "menu bar", which were
quick to fix while salvaging the rest of the translation that
Launchpad would have just lost.

In the end this relatively small job fixed about 60% of the new
according-to-LP untranslated strings. The new template brought the
untranslated strings count from ca. 360 to 1080, and this work
lessened that delta with over 400 strings. Those language teams that
won't do this will have a lot harder job to translate those 400
strings from scratch.

-Timo

(for reference, here's how I did it:
1. downloaded ubuntu's ubuntu-docs translations, let's say as ubuntu-strings.po
2. downloaded ubuntu-docs upstream translations, as newtemplate.po
3. msgmerge ubuntu-strings.po newtemplate.po > newcombined.po
4. make sure your comment headers in newcombined.po match the
newtemplate.po strings - especially the Launchpad export tags
5. use your favorite localization editor to go through all the fuzzy strings
- skip those that have clearly some different content (unless you're
in the mood of doing the translations, but I'd recommend first getting
the real offline job done)
- if you recognize that the strings seem very similar, first check
that all tags and URL:s are correct in the translated string at least
- there are a couple of subtle changes - then go casually over the
content that it still matches the English string. make changes as
necessary. mark as translated.
6. upload the newcombined.po to ubuntu-docs upstream LP translations
7. wait for the queue to handle it (it will be in 'needs review' for some hours)
)