Translations wanted for Hoary installer

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2005 at 09:15:51PM -0600, Ming Hua wrote:
> (Sorry, I sent this to Colin Watson in private by mistake, resending.)

Resending my private reply, more or less verbatim.

> On Fri, Mar 25, 2005 at 02:48:43PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > Here are the translation files (not in Rosetta yet, sorry; I talked to
> > the developers and it wasn't quite ready, and installer translations
> > need to be ready earlier than those for the rest of Ubuntu):
> > 
> >   http://people.ubuntu.com/~cjwatson/installer-po/
> >   http://people.ubuntu.com/~cjwatson/shadow-po/
> >   http://people.ubuntu.com/~cjwatson/base-config-po/
> 
> Hmm, I don't quite understand the situation here, but I am remotely
> connected to the Debian d-i translation work, so my question is: why not
> sync with d-i first, or is this already done?

Already mostly done, with a few exceptions (remember that we have been
in upstream version freeze for some time). However, we have introduced a
number of new strings in Ubuntu which have never been translated into
many languages.

Outside upstream version freeze, we sync with Debian regularly,
including translations.

> I just did a quick check for base-config-po/zh_CN.po, and found out
> there are 14 fuzzy and 11 untranslated strings and I know that Carlos
> has been keeping 100% zh_CN translation for the whole d-i since probably
> last year, so this surprised me.

Doesn't surprise me at all. Just look at base-config's diff from Debian
to Ubuntu!

> So I skimmed through the po file.  While there are indeed quite a few
> Ubuntu specific stuff (like contrib and non-free to resctriced and
> universe), there are also quite some generic strings.  For example, one
> fuzzy string is ``Configuring apt...", while looking at the translation,
> I think the change is from ``Configure apt'' or something similar.  I
> doubt this is a Ubuntu specific change, and if not, it should be already
> translated in Debian.

I'm afraid you're incorrect here; this is indeed an Ubuntu-specific
change. From the Debian->Ubuntu diff:

+Template: apt-setup/progress/title
+Type: title
+_Description: Configuring apt...

Debian doesn't have a progress bar in front of apt-setup because it
isn't asking that set of questions in the first stage (and Perl debconf
in the second stage has no support for displaying progress bars as yet,
although I've been doing some work on that), and so it doesn't have a
string of exactly this form.

In most cases I'm quite sure you'll find that the "generic"-looking
strings requiring translation are in fact either strings that were added
in Ubuntu or strings that were changed in Ubuntu in ways too complex for
me to be able to repair all the translations. In fact, I just checked,
and found the following:

  installer-po/zh_CN.po

    100 strings requiring translation or unfuzzying for zh_CN

    only one appears to be a string that came from Debian, and that was
    in a package outside core d-i (namely eject-udeb) that has not been
    translated to zh_CN

  base-config-po/zh_CN.po

    25 strings requiring translation or unfuzzying for zh_CN

    as far as I can tell, all are Ubuntu additions or changes, although
    in some cases the strings are similar enough to strings in Debian
    that unfuzzying them would not take too long

  shadow-po/zh_CN.po

    4 strings requiring translation or unfuzzying for zh_CN

    all are Ubuntu additions or changes

> And my next question is, how can Ubuntu installer translation work be
> coordinated with Debian?  Debian d-i has a wonderful translation team
> and several DDs dedicated to this, and if you look at the page above,
> they keep translation up-to-date wonderfully, despite of constant
> development.  I would like to work on the zh_CN translation of Ubuntu
> specific parts, and keep it updated for releases, but I would be more
> happy if my work for Ubuntu can be well coordinated with Debian d-i
> translation as well.

Yes, absolutely. I already do my best to keep translations in sync, and
when I contribute Ubuntu changes to Debian I'll send back translations
for any associated strings as well. When people send me changes in
strings that are common to Debian and Ubuntu, I've been known to simply
commit them to the Debian translation files instead; if that's not
feasible, I generally suggest to them that they should contribute the
changes to Debian. Do you have specific suggestions for how I could be
doing better?

I'd *love* to have the Ubuntu installer in revision control and handle
the translations using the same master file system as is used in the
Debian installer project. When this happens, it will be in arch, since
that's what we've standardised on in Canonical and are developing tools
and infrastructure to support. Unfortunately, the Canonical Arch team
has not yet been able to provide me with an import of d-i into arch.
When it does, you can be sure that I will shift over to it as fast as I
possibly can.

To be honest, I think the best thing that can happen to allow us to
coordinate installer translations better with Debian is for Debian not
to be in a freeze state. If I could freely commit major changes to d-i
at the moment without breaking things for sarge, a number of these
Ubuntu installer string changes would be in Debian already, and thus
would be handled by the Debian translation infrastructure.

In the longer term, I expect that Rosetta and the Debian installer
translation infrastructure can be connected up somehow so that work is
not duplicated between them.

> And shouldn't this topic be cc:ed to ubuntu-translators as well?

Sure; I had forgotten that that mailing list existed. Cc'ed there now,
and I'll bounce my original request for translations.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]