Re: On DDP sub-projects
On Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 10:44:24AM +0800, Onno Benschop wrote:
> I'm not sure I grasp all of what you describe, but I think what you're
> saying is:
>
> - DDP writes documents in English that get translated after the fact.
> - Others are writing documents in other languages.
> - You are asking about how to synchronize the effort.
I' asking if it would be interesting to distribute this
information from the main site even if it's not written in English.
>
> It appears as if a similar problem has been solved already, that of the
> format to use for publication. Pick the base format and translate to HTML,
> PDF, whatever.
Well. It's not the same. People do not write in HTML and not in
debiandoc due to not being able to handle the format. But people do write
(sometimes) in their mother language instead of a foreing one.
> I would have thought that picking a base language - the obvious one being
> English, and translating that.
Problem is, there are many documents out there useful to our users
that are *not* written in English. Even so, some of them will never be
translated into English:
- because they talk of an issue to specific to a given country
- because they talk of issues that affect only users speaking a given
language
You will agree with me that it's unnecesary to devote effort
to translate a document oriented only towards, for example, japanese users
into english.
If we had enough resources to translate *all* the documentation in
any language to documentation to any other then even those documents would
be translated, but that is not the case.
> Thus receiving, or becoming aware of a foreign (ie. other than the base
> language) document would require the document to be translated, then
> distributed.
>
And that's the point. Documentation that might be already useful
to our users (even if not to all of them) is delayed in its publication
and might have, after some time, lost is usefullness.
IMHO we should treat the DDP as we already treat the Web server,
ok, documents are primarily written in english, but there is an specific
area for translation teams and internationalisation teams
(w.d.o/international/) where documents are primarily written in other
languages (but might get translated to english over time).
The DDP would benefit by having a repository open, not only to the
english speakers, but to any other users. The translation/i18n teams of
each language would be in charge, as they currently in the website, to
provide documentation and translate it to english when it is a useful
effort.
Regards
Javi
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