Missing Translations

[Karsten Wade]

On Mon, 2006-10-09 at 03:39 +0200, Renato Pavičić wrote:
> Dana Sat, 07 Oct 2006 19:00:01 +0200, Robert 'Bob' Jensen  
> <docs-list at fedoralinks.org> napisali ste:
> 
> > to draw the line some where. Is one line enough? I think we all agree  
> > that it is not. Is 50% enough? I personally do not think so. We are  
> > trying to have a professional looking finished product, for this at  
> > times I think even 90% is a bit to low.
> 
> It should be stated _before_ I've started on any translation. I would not  
> waste time on translating important parts of some modules. I am not happy  
> with less than 90% either, but I think that within those packages I  
> managed to translate, there are most important parts.

As writers, we drew the line at 90%.  Incompletely translated prose is
much more confusing than an incompletely translated GUI.  Were we wrong?
Would you be happy if you opened the release notes and they were only
half translated?

At the least, I'd expect many, many bug reports.

Fortunately, as a small comfort, we can update fedora-release-notes with
additional translations.  None of your work is wasted as we can get it
into an update of the package.  I know that it is not in the initial
ISO, but:

1. The release notes point to the latest notes on the Web, and that is
where we always post additional translations as well.  This is not the
best for native speakers/readers, but it is still fairly good.

2. They will be included in any respins of the FC6 ISO that are done,
whether official or unofficial.

> Anyway, one cannot compare lines in like fedora-backgrounds with those in  
> desc.

To be clear, Bob's email is only about the release notes
(RELEASE-NOTES.pot).  The above and a few other places sound as if you
are discussing other packages.  Right now, these are all different
systems and processes.

> > What can we do better?
> >      More translators.
> 
> No. Better attitude toward existing translators. We asked on many, many  
> occasions to provide automatic update of PO's. Answers are like: "why  
> should we (i18n maintainers) bother, let every translator take take care  
> of it by himself". Ok, then I will let the files to be translated by  
> end-users! Why should I bother?

This is the first time that we have included documentation into the
i18n.redhat.com system for translation.  Previously (FC5, FC4, etc.),
all work was done by a small group of translators working on their own
in the documentation CVS (cvs.fedoraproject.org).  I apologize for the
mistakes we have made as we are learning all of this as we go.

It sounds as if, from your perspective, i) it should all work the same,
and ii) it shouldn't put unnecessary work on the translators.  In other
words, it shouldn't matter what the package source is (core, extras,
documentation), and it should not encumber translators with extra work
to check for updates and new builds for each package.

Unfortunately, that is not the way things are, and I'm not sure that we
are moving in that way very quickly.  For the documentation side,
Dimitris Glezos has taken on the job of fixing the processes between
translation and documentation.  We're going to have to include the Core
engineering group in this as well, and I do not know where that
discussion will go.

Our goals for FC7 for the Translation and Documentation Projects include
migration of CVS, migration of the Web tools from i18n.r.c, and a fixing
of all the processes.

> Also, again, I ask for a mean to inform maintainer of individual lang PO  
> that his/hers PO is updated with new lines. I have no time to hang arround  
> and refresh the i18n site every hour. And spend the time till next top of  
> the hour on crosschecking for new lines :S

Our responsibility in FC6 was just the RELEASE-NOTES.pot file, and we
sent messages to fedora-trans-list at every step of the way.  Often we
received no response, so we figured either no one was paying attention
or what we said was enough information.

That said, this should all be automated.  The problem here is resources
to do that automation work.  If there are any tools experts in any of
the translation projects, please consider helping with the migration and
fixes of the translation and documentation tools/CVS.

> It is easy to check those files every day, also it is easy to update each  
> PO with POT (thou it takes me 1-2 hours), yes it is easy --- to somebody  
> who does NOTHING else but this! I do NOT, I have to work. Sometime I can  
> devote 6 hours, sometimes it takes 6 days till I find time to _turn on_ my  
> PC.
> 
> And I beleive that there are other like me as well.

Agreed, and I'm sorry for the burden we've placed on everyone for this
release.  We had too many manual processes hacking everything
together. :(

When Dimitris asks for input on what to fix, I hope you and others speak
up with your grievances and ideas.

> >      More time for translation.
> >          It is our intent to allow for 10 days from the freeze to the  
> > need for translations for FC7. This will give the translation team an  
> > additional 3 days over what they have had in the past. Why? Because  
> > getting our release notes in every language is my personal goal. Yes 71  
> > languages. I would like to reach one half way to this goal by FC10.
> 
> Not only more time (but thnx on that), but REAL freeze for POT's as well.  
> On 3rd oct, on the day of the freeze, I saw several POT files to be  
> updated!

Here I think you are referring to software package POT files, yes?  We
are only promising additional time for documentation translation.

However, I hope that our making a new, successful process and tools is
going to influence the rest of the Fedora Project to follow our methods.

> And, in test3, there were not latest translations. For several modules. I  
> don't see why I have to file a bug report, because I do not understand how  
> come when it is so easy for me to update and check PO's, then how come it  
> is so hard to take latest? There is nothing to check! Just take what is  
> there.
> 
> Also, it took me almost one week to notice that release notes were updated  
>  from some 600 to some 1100 lines.

This was also a process problem.  We accepted additions to the release
notes via the Wiki until just a few days before making the POT file.
Many people did not add content until this time, and some content had to
change because of changes in release criteria, and some content changed
because writers are always tweaking language, something that does not
happen in software strings.

>  During update, some 400 lines were  
> marked as fuzzy, and more than half of them because some small typo in  
> POT. Small type or not, I had to spend same time reading those lines, and  
> those automaticaly translated.
> 
> When an update is done into any POT that is about only about removing  
> typos, the person who introduced those changes should inform everybody  
> about those changes. Like:
> "
> - removed typos in lines 1, 245, 654, 4343
> - significant changes in lines 5323, 54 , 7676
> - rest is new addition
> "

This is a good idea, but it might be difficult to make happen.  The
reason is that the XML is *not* the source for the release notes, it is
an interim format from the Wiki.  The real editing all occurred in the
Wiki, and when we output to the XML, it is sometimes very different
line positioning than before.

> If this is difficult, one has to ask himself why? I know why,because it is  
> so easy to do it by myself, wright? It is easier for one person  
> (introducer of new lines) to screw up the work of some 70 language teams.  
> You thing I am joking? Take a look at the line count! How many are alike,  
> and how many are true?

If there is anything we can do to make it easier for translators, I
agree that we should consider adding more time in the documentation side
of the process to do that.  Right now, this would involve an editor
reading the diff between versions for the 32 XML files and noting what
was changed and why.

> It is a waste of time when after several minutes of carefull studying of  
> quite long line, I found out that a blank space or a punctuation has been  
> removed. No metter whether I noticed that before, no matter wheter my  
> language rules state that a sentence has to end with a dot, I got fuzzy  
> (therefore untranslated) because somebody was to lazzy to proof POT before  
> commiting it. Or to announce his/hers changes.
> 
> Also, I don't see how adding new lines to my PO should be my  
> responsibility? I did not add new lines to POT. Whoever added those lines  
> has the responsibility to announce and update. It is easier to update 70  
> languages once, than for me to update 70 files every day. Just to be on a  
> safe side.

Some of these mistakes are because this is the first time the
Documentation Project has worked directly with all the translators in
your own CVS.  We learned many things we did not know before.  For
example, that changing a space or an inline XML tag would cause a line
to be fuzzy or untranslated.

Unfortunately, almost none of you gave us feedback like this during the
test cycles.  We followed very similar procedures for test1, test2, and
test3 as we did for the final version.  One reason we did so many tests
was to find and fix problems in the process early on.  While your
complaints are legitimate, they come far too late in this release to do
anything about them this time except to apologize, apologize, apologize.

You'll detect a little frustration from me here.  This is because, if
you look over the last months in fedora-trans-list, I have sent multiple
emails about translation and have received almost no feedback.  I truly
wish you had made these complaints back in the test1 or test2 phase, we
might have been able to avoid many problems at the end.

If we had a number of translations (or even any) that were at the >55%
mark, I might have looked for a different number than "90% translated."
Unfortunately, and certainly because of mistakes in our process, most
translations were either 0%, 50%, or 95%+.  This made it easy to draw
the line.

Fortunately, we can still get any/all translations in updates to this
package.

Thanks for your input, I hope you keep it coming. :)

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
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