FOSDEM 2008: L10N meeting (Sunday)

[Bart Couvreur]

FOSDEM 2008: L10N meeting (Sunday)
==================================

We meet up with some off the people who where around at Fosdem to
discuss in-person how we were doing as a project, and how we could
enable ourselves to do things much better. Part of this group had an
initial meeting with Max Spevack last year at the same event and that
kicked off all the stuff that's been going on in L10N recently. If you
have any questions what so ever, don't hesitate to ask on-list.

Attendees:
----------

      * Fabian Affolter (de): german maintainer
      * Michael (sk): new to the L10N project
      * Marek Mahut (sk): slovak maintainer
      * Thomas Canniot (fr): french maintainer
      * Josselin (fr): interested in translation memories
      * Bart Couvreur (nl): dutch maintainer
      * Dimitris Glezos (el): greek maintainer, toolchain ninja
      * Friedel Wolff: writer of pootle (web-based translation tool)

Difficulties in the project:
----------------------------

      * Same language can be written in a slightly different way
        depeneding on the country (de_DE vs de_CH)
      * Translators need to feel involved
      * Loss of motivation because the system is to hard to join / use
      * People need to know English, which actually doesn't have to be
        the case (proof-reading is also part of translation)
      * Communication is key factor to succes


Successes in the project:
------------------------

      * Creating maintainership role has been a serious boost for the
        different teams
      * Centralization of the tools is a huge step in the right
        direction
      * Easier for a translator to use: no need to know any CLI tools to
        get to work, but allowing people who do like CLI to continue
        their work
      * Increased visibility in the Fedora project
      * Metrics showing a serious increase in the project of members,
        commits, mails, ...


Tools (evaluation + todo):
------

      * Damned Lies (stats):
             1. (Eval) Branches, languages, modules makes it easier to
                find stuff.
             2. (TODO) Connect DL with Transifex, with easy
                upload/download links. Possibly merge DL and Transifex,
                to make it even better (keep the hard parts of DL, and
                replace the easy ones with Transifex, makes it more
                dynamic)
             3. (TODO) Sorting can be done better: always keep HEAD,
                tip, master on top to avoid confusion
                
      * Transifex:
             1. (Eval) Combining the different VCS has been considerd
                the major succes the past year
             2. (TODO) CLI has highest priority (over HTTP/JSON)
             3. (TODO) Ability to check the commits by maintainers
             4. (TODO) Increase verbosity, errors, etc
             5. (TODO) Locking the files to one person; use mails to
                check when a files get updates,
             6. (TODO) Automatic e-mails to list when pot-files get
                updated (Update the specific module when a pot-file gets
                committed, which sends a mail to the list <-> check on
                the updates-script which files changed and send thoose
                pot-files at that moment)
             7. (TODO) Let Transifex send a mail to the apporpriate list
                on commits


General ideas:
--------------

      * Translation memory: keeping the translations consistent, let
        translators do look-ups to make translations beter
      * Web translation interface: start to use Pootle to increase the
        input from the community. Pootle can do suggestion-based
        translations, which leaves the final responsibility with the
        translator/maintainer. Pootle can be configured per language,
        per module, ... . If possible (CLA permits, Legal needs to be
        contacted) allow outsiders to do suggestions. Pootle can also
        split a huge translation file into smaller chunks, so different
        translators can work on it at the same time
      * Localized spins on release day?


============

That's it, feel free to comment on anything, or if you don't get what
it's about :-)

Thanks to all who took part in this,

Bart


-- 
Bart <couf at fedoraproject.org> <couf at skynet.be>
key fingerprint: 6AAB 544D 3432 D013 776D  3602 ADB6 6B2A D93F 0F93
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