Annoucement: New translation status page is installed

[Josep Puigdemont]

On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 02:19, Bernd Groh wrote:
> Josep Puigdemont schrieb:
> >On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 11:38, Bernd Groh wrote:
> >>If you have only 2 translators, then it may not be a problem, it gets 
> >>more difficult with 10. And if you have 20+ translators to a language, 
> >>peer-to-peer communication has proven not to be ideal. In this way, 
> >>    
> >I think we should have been consulted about this change before it was
> >applied, no? Maybe you did and I missed it, sorry! After all, the
> >translation project is a true community effort, and we might have
> >something to say about what's best for us too...
> >
> 
> I did this on request from a lot of people within the community, and I 
> believed their reasoning to be very valid.
> 

I completely missed that, and wasn't aware of the fact that this was a
community request, and being this the functionality the community
wanted, it seems very logical that it was implemented.

Anyway, I still disagree in not having translation teams instead, and I
would be a bad member of the community if I didn't at least mention it
(even if it is only for myself who I'm speaking for).

I appreciate the advantages of this new method:
  * it's a community request
  * translation work accessible to everybody
  * avoids duplicated work
  * Anyone can see who's doing what in a very organized way
  * I think I miss a few more here...

It would also be interesting to see which points you (plural) think are
not so good, or could be improved.

  For me, the problem I see is that it doesn't encourage team work. In
any translation project it is very important that all translators get in
contact, that way we make sure we all use the same terminology, the same
style, etc, and thus we guarantee a certain level of quality and
consistency. Quality gets better with time.

  In my particular case I can enjoy the experience of a group that has
been working with the translation of open source software for more than
7 years. This work includes a great compendium of words and neologisms,
a style guide, and a translation memory with more than 62,000 entries.
Anyone with sufficient knowledge can do a translation, but although
those 7 years of work are accessible to anyone, nobody forces a new
translator to use them.
  On the other hand, if a new translator had to join a team, s/he would
have to use the same style and terminology as the rest of the team,
which I find _very_ important. For example, the word "File" can be
translated into my language as "Fitxer" or "Arxiu". In order to keep
consistency we had to decide which one to use and stay with it always,
and _that's_ what a translation team can guarantee, and _that_ improves
quality and consistency among translations. That's just one example, but
there are many, specially those related to "new" terms like "buffer" or
"cache", for which many people use the English term when there already
is a translation.

> >
> >What if it never gets finished? Or never released, or someone else can
> >translate it faster, or if it contains errors? Or if it does't use the
> >same terminology/style as other translations?
> >
> 
> If it doesn't get finished in time, we'll release it. If somone else can 
> translate it faster, so what? And I don't think all the other problems 
> are to be associated with the new system, you have the same problems 
> without it.
> 

True, you're right, but, as explained above, the "other problems" are
not present if translation teams are used.

I still think that it would be good to force translators to work and
join translation teams.

[cut]
> Why? Why does the new system keep you from communicating with other 
> translators in your language?
> 

It doesn't, but the fact that it doesn't, doesn't mean that it makes me
communicate with other translators, which, for the reasons explained
above, I believe should be enforced.

> 
> >On the other hand it restricts the assignment of modules to people using
> >CVS. Just as an example, in our team we have some very good translators
> >that use Windows, and have no idea about CVS or SSH keys, but are very
> >valuable to us.
> >
> 
> Who is commiting their files?

I was, and I suppose you'll say that I can take the file for them and
continue committing their files. True, it is just that I don't want to
figure as a translator of something someone else is translating, I would
feel like steeling their credit.

> 
> 
> >IMHO, I think a better approach is that of the gnome translation
> >project, having a coordinator for a language and making him/her commit
> >the changes, but I believe Christian Rose has more to say if this is the
> >case than I do.
> >
> 
> The new system has the option of a maintainer. I can simply set the 
> coordinator the maintainer of all modules of a certain language, and 
> this maintainer then has full access to the cvs for that language. In 
> how is that different to what gnome is doing? Nobody keeps only one 

That's what I could find:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/join.html

GNOME makes you be part of a team, you don't get CVS access unless
someone vouches for you (iirc) or you have done previous work that
proves you should have access (or deserve to).

> person from commiting. We simply disallow two non-maintainers from 
> commiting at the same time.

I believe it can be done with teams too.

 That's just my opinion and I can be wrong too. So far no one has backed
me up, and the community has already spoken, but I had to tell to have
the satisfaction of having done [at least for once] my duty :)

Keep up the good work!

Best regards,

Josep