Re: Effort to reduce translatable strings in debian-edu-doc manuals
Hi Wolfgang
Wolfgang Schweer schreef op vr 24-07-2020 om 13:49 [+0200]:
> Hi Frans,
>
> thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Thank you for your comments and for keeping me alert.
>
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 10:07:40PM +0200, Frans Spiesschaert wrote:
> >
>
> > I think it should be possible to reduce the amount of strings to be
> > translated by filtering out from the POT file as many non-translatable
> > strings as possible.
>
> While this is possible, it's not trivial at all.
>
> Yes, it's supposed to be complicated.
While I do agree that it won't be easy, I still think that it should be
possible to at least make some progress on this.
But let me make this clear: it cannot be acceptable to make existing things
worse by changing certain things.
>
> > Here goes the proposal.
> >
> > ***1*** about the actual po4a.cfg
> >
> > The actual po4a.cfg looks like this:
> >
> > As far as I can tell the option -o untranslated='<listitem>'
> > has no effect on the audacity manual and could be dropped safely.
>
> Right; this stanza seems to stem from an effort (long ago) to exclude
> some strings from being translated.
Cool! So let's revive that effort ;)
>
> > ***2*** proposal for an updated p04a.cfg
> >
> > I would propose to add a pot_in element to po4a.cfg
> > this would make po4a.cfg look like this.
> >
> > [po_directory] .
> >
> > [type: docbook] audacity-manual.xml \
> > pot_in:audacity-manual_stripped.xml \
> > $lang:$lang.xml \
> > opt:"-M UTF-8 -k 15"
> >
> >
>
> The master XML file (in this case audacity-manual.xml) is generated via
> 'make update' from the related AllInOne wiki page. This procedure is
> already far from being trivial, including various hacks.
I am aware of it, and it would be unacceptable to break things.
>
> >
> > # delete paragraphs that just have a <inlinemediaobject>
> > # (no need to translate the name of inserted images)
> > /^<para><inlinemediaobject>/,+1d
>
> IMO this would imply to drop alt names for the images (most of them have
> one) which might not be wanted. (I tried to get rid of the image issue
> some time ago and refrained from doing so.)
You are right on this. By stripping the whole paragraph, not only the image
name, but also the alt name is stripped. As far as the audacity manual is
concerned, I don't consider it a deterioration, because the alt names are
just a repetition of the filename. And putting my translator head on, I
never translate file names.
Things are different, though, for the bullseye manual for instance. In that
manual some alt names are proper descriptions of the file content, and as a
translator, I want to translate such strings. So stripping the whole
paragraph would indeed be a deterioration instead of an improvement.
>
> >
>
> As far as the translators issue is concerned:
>
> IMO this could be dropped completely. (some examples were given)
This is an option definitely worth considering, but I would prefer to keep
giving credit to translators, as long as this wouldn't imply each time a
POT-file update. Translating a manual such as the bullseye manual is quite
an effort that is worth being given credit for (if reasonably possible).
> The translators could be credited, though - via an (optional) addendum
> file for a
> specific translation.
This is a solution that is used by Lucas Nussbaum for his packaging-
tutorial and it is also an option that is suggested by the developers of
po4a.
However, such .add files can reasonably only be created by the translators
themselves because it needs to be written in their own language.
Lucas Nussbaum therefore made a README.translators file in his source, that
reads
"Crediting your work:
See po4a/add_fr/fr.add for an example of adding an additional slide at the
end, and the fr.po file for an example of adding your name on the title
slide."
But for translators using hosted-weblate for their translations, creating
such an extra file isn't an option.
Therefore I am still in favour of a rewording of the translation copyright
paragraphs.
I am aware that the file scripts/get_copyright parses the xml or po files
to collect this information.
So if we would alter the wording of the translation copyright paragraphs,
we would have to adapt that script to the new situation (without breaking
anything of course).
>
> For the Bullseye manual translations, a related p4a.cfg file and
> sample {de,nl,nb} addendum files are attached. With these files present
> in
> 'documentation/debian-edu-bullseye' of a local debian-edu-doc git clone,
> running 'LINGUA=nb make html' will generate a modified HTML manual file
> which can be opened locally. Click the first link on the page to see the
> translator credits. Same applies to (nl) and (de).
>
Thank you for those suggestions and examples. Let's say that I put them on
hold for the moment, until it is proven that what I am aiming for is
unfeasible (I hope not, of course).
Frans
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