[Minimizing Fedora] Langpacks for Firefox.

[Tom Lane]

Christopher Aillon <caillon at redhat.com> writes:
> ... Because the system doesn't work for it.  The po system works great for 
> GNOME applications where the translators are heavily using Linux and 
> don't necessarily mind looking through source files to make changes. 
> The sources for any individual application don't change as much as the 
> sources for Firefox does.  The .po file would be large and any change to 
> the source coupled with a language change would make it extremely hard 
> to track down precisely what needs an updated translation without 
> tracking down source changelogs and even then it would not be easy.  The 
> majority of people writing Firefox translations run Windows and have no 
> technology background whatsoever.  The .po system just does not work for 
> the project, so please don't try to force them to use it.

Hmm ... without wishing to defend any details of the .po system, doesn't
the above argument boil down to "I have incompetent people doing my
message translations"?  There will *always* be cases where wording that
the original author thought was clear is ambiguous for someone else.
If a translator can't/won't look at the code-in-context to see what was
meant --- or even realize that he doesn't understand, and must ask the
coder for clarification --- he'll probably produce a bad translation.

Translators don't need to be capable of writing $chosen-implementation-
language, but if they are afraid to even read it, they are not going
to be a net plus for your project.

			regards, tom lane