Re: Do not touch l10n files (was Re: DDTP issue)

[barbier@linuxfr.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 10:36:53PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 10:04:43PM +0200, Denis Barbier wrote:
> > On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 05:56:08PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > > Do we have such standard document for the original english description ?
> > > No, and there is no dedicated team to review them.
> > 
> > debian-l10n-english
> 
> There have been no email send to this list from November 2002 to
> February 2003. Can we call that a team ?  

This list is stalled when no input is sent, but this is certainly not
the fault of those who are kindly reviewing English prose.

[...]
> > > Telling them 'you do not speak french, so don't try to understand' is
> > > not acceptable.
> > 
> > Sure it is.  If they believe that the translator is wrong, they can
> > ask a trusted person of their own to review the translation.
> 
> I have done that several time myself. The result was several time that
> the ddtp translation were sheer nonsense. I am sorry. So I have used
> my veto right to uploaded meaningful translation.  Trust is not given
> for free, one need to deserve it.

I guess that you did it for French translations.  Do you imagine
sending such a message to a Japanese translator:
  My description has a comma separated list but your translation
  does not contain any comma.  Moreover there is no space between
  words which makes your text look ugly.  For these reasons I will
  apply my veto right.
?

Here is what I am talking about: some developers alter translations
for languages they do not understand, which is silly.  If you are not
fluent in a given language, do not try to fix translations, it is
likely that you will make them worse.

[...]
> For example removing trailing dot of the short description from the
> french translation is wrong if the english version has it. The dot must
> first be removed from the english version and then from the translation.
> So notify the maintainer and wait until he upload a fixed version.

Right, but this is not what is discussed here.  English description is not
wrong, so the translator had no reason to send a bugreport.

[...]
> As far as my experience is concerned, people allows themselves to
> translate description of packages they do not understand in english
> instead of giving up  and produce nonsense as translation. This is
> that I would like the reviewers to focus on, not on typographical details.

I agree this is a problem, but I do not know how to prevent these people
from translating.  Telling reviewers to relax grammar rules does not help.
OTOH some French maintainers are unable to write plain French but
translate their material, this is also a problem.

Denis