Re: DDTP issue

[barbier@linuxfr.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Sat, May 10, 2003 at 01:05:31PM +0100, Thom May wrote:
[...]
> > Yeah, in this world reviewers sometimes improve wording and send suggestions
> > to translators, who in turn modify their translations accordingly.  I know
> > it sounds incredible, but it happens.
> > 
> Wording, as you so sarcastically put it, is not the same as layout.

The problem here is that French and English languages are quite similar,
so you believe that you can tell if a given layout is adequate in French.
Do you also review Asian translations to see how they are displayed?
Their layout looks also very different from my point of view.

Technically speaking, having an itemized list is most of the times
considered as being aesthetically superior to a long list of comma
separated items from a French typographical point of view.
Don't know English rules about this issue.

[...]
> > I am not qualified to improve English description, you may ask on
> > debian-l10n-english if you want.
> >
> So, you're not qualified to improve the description, but you think that
> yours
  ^^^^^  again it is not mine, I never read this description
         before this thread went on debian-l10n-frech
> is better anyway? How does that work?

Very simple: I am a French native speaker, and feel qualified to make
a judgement on the *French* description.

[...]
> > > It is a maintainer responsability to keep the description updated in all
> > > its part (format included).
> > 
> > Could you be more explicit?  I see nothing wrong with the format used here.
>
> It is not the format that we chose. As such, and if you're intransingence
> continues, we're only left with one option, to veto the translation. Which I
> don't think anyone wants, since it would put to waste a lot of time and
> energy which we are grateful for.

I did not translate this description and do not contribute to the DDTP
task force, so I won't certainly try to have this French translation
changed.  Maybe the French translator or someone else will (or did
it already).

Some developers feel qualified to change translations without even
notifying translators (as Tollef is Cc'ed, I will mention his removal
of 0xa0 characters from French debconf templates, see changelog
entry for cvs 1.11.2-1), and I am tired of having to check if they
broke them.  AFAICT this is Debian specific, e.g. upstream authors
do not make changes in their PO files, except when fixing trivial
bugs.  Our translator's job is sometimes painful within Debian because
DD tend to believe that their judgement is superior to everyone's else.
As I wanted to raise this issue on debian-devel for a while, I will
take this opportunity and explain why requesting for a change in this
French translation is silly. 

Denis