With the release in sight, I feel the need to put the focus on the localization work. Often, during the development phase of the release, developers logically modify localizable material to fit the needs of their packages. Most of the time, translators try to follow that flow in order to avoid rushing out during the freeze. The most active teams or individuals are quite successful in this but we always have things to complete at the last minute. To achieve this, I would like to ask for cooperation to all developers and maintainers: please think *twice* before modifying localized material in uploads targeted for squeeze: - debconf templates - localized strings in Debian native packages - localized manpages (particularly those using gettext) If you really need to do so, please consider whether your change does affect translations or not. Fixing English spelling or typographical errors usually doesn't, but if you just fix the error, you'll "fuzzy" translations. If you need to do so, please look in the Developer's Reference for advice about proper methods to unfuzzy PO files...or just ask for help on the debian-i18n mailing list. If changes *do* affect translations, please consider sending a call for translations before doing it *and* leave translators time to adjust their work. The right tool to use for this is "podebconf-report-po" from the po-debconf package. You can use it *even* for material that is not debconf translations. If in doubt, ask for help on debian-i18n! You will also be nagged quite strongly in the upcoming weeks by some of the i18n folks (probably myself at first). We will ask you for uploads fixing l10n, we might even NMU your packages, we will nag the release team for release exceptions for l10n. Please understand that good localization completeness is our reward for nearly 2 years of hard work following you guys....and that 100% is our Grail. Let's together make squeeze the best localized Debian release ever! --
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