Notes about translation of Ubuntu 18.04

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Hi all!

2.5 weeks left until final freeze, and I'd like to call your attention 
to a few things.

The translation coverage of the snapd package (the snappy template) is 
poor in many languages. Some issues with the translation template have 
probably contributed to that, but also the fact that the template has 
had too low priority in the Launchpad interface. I have raised the 
priority, so now the snappy template is shown on the first page of the 
translation overview for respective language, for instance:

https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+lang/gl

It should be noted that Launchpad is upstream for the snapd translations.

After the switch to GNOME, some of the core GNOME packages are more 
important than when Unity was default in Ubuntu. The GNOME packages are 
translated upstream, and in many cases the upstream translations are 
simply imported to LP and added to our language packs and there is not 
much to do for the translators on the Ubuntu side.

But..

Some of the GNOME packages have Ubuntu modifications with translatable 
strings which have to be translated via Launchpad.

gnome-software
gnome-control-center
gnome-online-accounts
gnome-session

I'm sure there are more of the kind, but the ones mentioned are some of 
the most important. (Also, due to various packaging issues some of the 
Ubuntu specific strings have been made available at Launchpad just 
recently.)

It may consequently be a good idea to review the Launchpad translation 
overview and look for GNOME templates with untranslated strings, even 
for packages which you know are fully translated upstream.

As regards the Ubuntu Desktop Guide: As mentioned previously, the 
desktop guide now consists to >90% of pages from the gnome-user-docs and 
gnome-getting-started-docs packages, which are translated upstream only. 
The ubuntu-docs package (template ubuntu-help), which adds a few pages, 
is translated at LP, though.

That's it for now. Please don't hesitate to ask for clarifications. And, 
if you encounter Ubuntu issues when translating, please file bug reports 
against the ubuntu-translations project.

-- 
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj