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Re: bug-reporting for non-English users



Keld Jørn Simonsen a écrit :

1. an API that takes the non-english error message and displays it in
English. many - or say - most programs are not run in English, but in
another language, in the first place. So it is difficult to write
a bug report in English, when even the error message in englishi is not
known . Some way to get or keep the english message need to be
available. Maybe save it in an environment variable? Called ERRORTEXT or
such? And then make it available  in any form to fill out a bug report.
Or may be create a tool that will allow to reverse lookup to find the original english msgid in the .po? There would be collisions, off course, but not so much and the bug context should be enougth to find which one is concerned.

2. Bug reports on the translation should go to the translator, not the
maintainer of the program.
Mhhh... I think most of the bugs are not translation problems... But I agree that a bug report in foreign language should go to its translation team first (which would give them a lot more work probably).

One could do this through a "reportbug" switch allowing the user to choose between english or "local" language (with a warning about additionnal delay because of the translation). Then "reportbug" could send it directly to the BTS or to the corresponding translation team, depending on that choice.

One could even ease this translation process if it was integrated into the BTS by: centralizing all reports in the BTS (event foreign ones, but they may not be displayed), spooling reports to translate, alerting the corresponding team, allow the team to translate and "publish" the translation on the BTS, then the usual BTS rules would apply.

3. If the maintainer gets a bug report in a langueage that is not
understood by the maintainer,  there should be established ways of
contacting a translator for the language in question to get the bug
report translated.

This would be another good way too... Except that it would publish foreign reports. I'm not sure if it's more an advantage than an inconvenience...

Another way could be to internationalise the BTS, and allow bugs "notice" translation (the subject line). It would be the best to allow users to look for their bug before submitting a new one! But it would be a huge work too... Not really feasible I think (there is currently 642 bugs, not counting the non-release-critical ones)... :-(

To facilitate this, a form for reporting bugs should
indicate the language used for reporting .
Agreed! It's essential!

--
Jean Christophe "プログフ" ANDRÉ — http://asie-pacifique.auf.org/
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