Release notes translation -- what's up?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, 2006-09-28 at 21:52 +0200, Thomas Canniot wrote:
> Le mercredi 27 septembre 2006 à 22:15 -0400, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
> > On Thu, 2006-09-28 at 01:49 +0100, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> > > We are less than 3 days before the translation freeze and the POT file for the
> > > relnotes hasn't landed yet on i18n?
> > > 
> > > Can we get some information about what's going on?
> > 
> > The Docs Project folks have reached out for a number of Translation
> > people, but with no luck --
> > 
> > -- UNTIL: Aman got back and checked in with us tonight.  See his earlier
> > message; the new POT is available which translators should merge and
> > work on as soon as possible.  We apologize for the short notice.  We
> > were about a day late or so with our output, which didn't help.  Rest
> > assured this is not the end of this particular story, and we are going
> > to step up our efforts to jump-start improvement of this process.
> 
> 
> Thanks, but ... when I look at all the modifications that have been made
> for the last relnotes issue, I really feel disappointed. I thought that
> keeping complete and up to date translations of all the relnotes issues
> during summer would avoid having so much strings to translate for the
> latest issue. I was wrong.
> 
> It seems that beat writers were not keen on writing before fc6 final
> release, then I should suggest that translators may need much more of a
> week to translate the final relnotes issue. Moreover, more time could
> avoid the panic/confusion that we saw this week.

I couldn't agree more, Thomas.  The blame falls on a lot of different
factors:

1.  The wiki makes it easier for people to put up release notes, but it
also makes them easier to change.  A lot of these changes are minor or
cosmetic, but they still result in untranslated strings.  I watched the
wiki all summer, and edited it constantly to make sure that the language
was clear and easier to translate.  But the result is that translators
are not necessarily saving themselves work by translating early and
often.  And yes, too many beat writers are waiting until the last
minute.

2.  When we edited the test3 version of the release notes, we used our
new wiki conversion engine, and then the editors (including primarily
me) retagged things into proper DocBook.  When we got the new POT ready
for final, we realized that we were going to have to retag everything
the same way to avoid creating brand-new untranslated strings.  As I
understand the issue, msgmerge thinks these are completely different
strings:

  "Use the command <code>msgmerge -U</code>."
  "Use the command <command>msgmerge -U</code>."

Or at least they're "fuzzy."  Which means the numbers *look* inflated.
Maybe there's less work than it looks like, but a string is still a
string, and someone has to look at it.

3.  No one from the Translation Project management responded to our
email for some time to move the POT.  We were very lucky that Aman
stopped by IRC -- I think he's still on vacation, no less -- and helped
us out.

4.  Our normal editorial staff had some unplanned downtime as a result
of "real-life" issues.  Sometimes these things happen, it's just life.
But on top of that, we have *VERY* few people actively helping on Docs
Project.  In fact, you can probably count them on two hands.  

> I couldn't check my mail as much as I usually do this week. I got an
> internet connection on Monday, but did not took the POT file as it was
> not really up to date as it should. Now that I can, I am before a
> 393-strings-that-need-overreading document. I am VERY sad to tell that I
> won't be able to translate that much of strings in so a little time :'(
> 
> French relnotes won't be on the DVD, oh sh*t :(

I am very disappointed at the way this process went, but I feel that in
a lot of ways, we really did do our best given the circumstances.
However, that doesn't mean we can't improve.  I would like to propose
the following -- and I'm just brainstorming here:

1.  No release notes translations to be done until test3, to minimize
wasted effort from translators.  *A LOT* changes from test1 until final,
but not nearly as much from test3 until final.

2.  Set the new deadline for translation *10 days* before the target
date instead of 7.  This gives us wiggle room, so at worst, if we're a
day or two late, there's still more than a week to translate.

3.  A sort of Docs/Translation "summit" meeting on IRC to work out a
more rigorous scheduling routine, to avoid unnecessary delays.

Your comments and thoughts are appreciated.  I am setting the follow-up
to fedora-trans-list.  Any interested Docs people should be subscribed
here as well.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/attachments/20061001/02d516d2/attachment.sig>