Re: RFD: translated description with dpkg
On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 03:56:01PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > I don't think this is a good reason for keeping maintainers out of the loop.
> > I'm wary of the attitude that "the maintainer can't help us, he doesn't speak
> > our language and doesn't care about translations". Most developers are
> > interested in making their packages as good as possible, and making sure that
> > they serve the needs of their users, and I think it's important that
> > translators recognize this and take advantage of the very people who can be
> > the best advocates for the individual packages. Also, many maintainers may
> > not speak a language well enough to do their own translations, but they may
> > recognize when a translator has misunderstood and be able to help the
> > translator in this way. I would like to see a solution where this sort of
> > collaboration is encouraged.
>
> I agree. It would be analagous to saying "oh, most debian developers are
> not graphics artists, and don't care about graphics", and so take
> developers out of the loop when it comes to images and icons that are
> included in debian packages. No I'm not a graphics artist. Yes I have to
> rely on others for contributions of icons that look good (and I have
> recently -- thanks!). This doesn't mean I shouldn't, as a debian
> developer, be firmly in the loop when it comes to those images.
>
> I don't speak German, but if I get a German translation, and then apply
> it and get complaints that it sucks, I as a maintainer am responsible
> for arranging the get the translation fixed. I don't speak C++, but when
> someone finds a bug in some scrap of C++ that is lurking in a package I
> am still responsible for getting it fixed. Others may not speak English
> natively, but they are still responsible for providing decent English
> package descriptions in the packages they maintain (and the proposed
> system can't change that, really).
Even if you can't draw, you can recognize a great icon. As you say, for a
translation, you rely on someone else ranting. What will you do if two
frenchs contact you with a translation each, saying each other translation
is bad ? (french writing is hard enough to make this possible). How why you
sort out who's right and who's wrong ?
> > Personally, I wonder if the /best/ solution would be similar to what we have
> > in the archive now for overrides file: create a central repository with all
> > of the translations, used by the archive, so that there are no delays in
> > making the translations available; but submit the translations to the
> > maintainer, so that they can also be included in the .deb.
>
> I think that could be a good idea.
That's planned, no problem.
> > > - if you put all translations in the same file, you'll have
> > > encoding problems
> >
> > But this is a problem that must be solved anyway, because we currently do
> > this with debconf templates!
>
> I think debconf solves it, even. Others may disagree.
For french, no problem. I will let the asian languages speakers speak up ;)
Bye, Mt.
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