translations and the ddtp
On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:21:18AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Op vr 05-09-2003, om 09:16 schreef Martin Quinson:
> > On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 10:44:08PM -0700, Joshua Kwan wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 07:15:57AM +0200, Martin Godisch wrote:
> > > > Are these actually used somewhere? If I switch my browser language I see
> > > > packages.d.o still in English, if I switch my environment, dselect and
> > > > apt-cache show package descriptions still in English... What are these
> > > > translations good for?
> > >
> > > Oh, also debconf templates are translated there for use in po-debconf,
> > > but those usually get to the BTS anyway.
> >
> > Err, AFAIK, the ddtp translates the old-style debconf templates.
>
> Well, your knowledge is outdated, then. Please check your facts next
> time :-)
>
> (they do both...)
I did recheck, and the fact is that I'm right and you are wrong, sorry about
that.
The translations of debconf templates in the ddtp are always as broken as
they used to be. The templates are extracted from the binary package, and
then reformated to the po format. But it means that previous translations
are lost in the process of updating, for example. That means that you have
to choose between using the ddtp always or never. Using it once leads to
unacceptable translation loss.
Moreover, the update is not done, which leads to wrong results. Check for
example http://ddtp.debian.org/debconf/maintainer/joeyh@debian.org.html
about slrn. The german translation is reported to be completed (17/17) while
the french one is not that advanced (14/17).
But when looking at the source code of slrn, I get the following:
/tmp/slrn-0.9.8.0/debian/po$ msgfmt --statistics fr.po
25 translated messages.
/tmp/slrn-0.9.8.0/debian/po$ msgfmt --statistics fr.po
17 translated messages.
/tmp/slrn-0.9.8.0/debian/po$ debconf-updatepo
/tmp/slrn-0.9.8.0/debian/po$ msgfmt --statistics fr.po
25 translated messages.
/tmp/slrn-0.9.8.0/debian/po$ msgfmt --statistics de.po
17 translated messages, 3 fuzzy translations, 5 untranslated messages.
When the maintainer does not run the debconf-updatepo, there is little to do
for statistic extractors (and w.d.o/intl/l10n also report the german
translation as completed), but I dunno where the ddtp gets that the french
template is not translated. I guess the data where not updated since the
version 0.9.7.4-23 of slrn, which updates the french translation (according
to the relevant changelog). For information, it was released the 17 Oct
2002. But I may be wrong on the explanation, of course. The fact is that it
is not uptodate.
Moreover, if you really want me to state my feeling about the ddtp, I don't
feel it really reliable. The web page is a nightmare to navigate since there
is so much broken links. It is also very very difficult to translate, since
all translations are in the same wml file (that's exactly the broken design
po-debconf solves for debconf). That's kind of sad that people commited to
translations did such an internationalisation error.
And the adress to use is now ddtp3@ddtp.debian.org (or something like that).
It exists since 10 days since the previous one stoped to work a while ago.
And it looks like that it is now broken as well.
So, please, next time, *you* should check your facts before switching to the
arrogant mode.
And to answer the original question, no, the ddtp is not the central point
of translation in debian. There is no such page right now, but the better
existing approximation for now is www.debian.org/international
Note however that I do not try to minimize the work of grisu and others on
the ddtp. I'm just saying that there is still issues which have to be solved
before the ddtp (which means debian *description* translation project) can
be used as central point for that.
Thanks for your time, Mt.
--
Every day of my life I am forced to add another name to the list of people
who piss me off!
--- Calvin
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