Re: Asking for a new pseudo package in the BTS: l10n-french

[Martin Quinson <Martin.Quinson@tuxfamily.org>]

So, what do you guys think ?

To sum up my point, the best solution would be that translators become the
same status inside Debian than maintainers. 

One way to achieve that is that binary packages would contain not only
data.tar.gz, but also data-XX.tar.gz (and maybe doc-XX.tar.gz, but that's
another point), one for each language. Then, building a binary package would
build all parts. So, when the maintainer release a version, he release the
whole stuff. Then, translator would be provided a way to overide the data-XX
part with updated translation. That's a bit what's proposed in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/debian-devel-200108/msg02329.html

I agree that there is still a lot of design issues with that approach (what
will be the package version when a translation is updated?), but if we could
get this working, it would be the best.


As long as this solution isn't effective (ie a loooong time), we have to
search for tricks. 

One possible trick is to create a pseudo-package for each translation team
(this pseudo-package could be named qa-<language), and allow bug repport
against it to: 
  1) allow bug repport in the local language, and not english
  2) allow translators to see immediatly bugs of their work, without asking
     them to monitor all the bugs of all the packages they translate.
     
Another trick is a 'translation' tag for the BTS (see #114221). Also
usefull (with PTS, translators could subscribe to all translation bugs of
packages they translate), but not as much as the first trick, since:
  - I'm not sure of the maintainers' reaction when they see a bug in french
    with the "translation" tag.
  - translator will get all translation bugs, not only the ones for their
    language. Could be overcome by the creation of many 'translation-XX'
    tags, but is this what we want?


Proposed solutions which does not work well IMHO:
  - keep as we are: bugs are repported against the package containing it:
    every translation team have to have the needed manpower to monitor *all*
    bugs submitted against *all* Debian package.
  - keep as we are, but use the 'upstream' tag for translations issues.
    That means that translators are denied the use of the BTS and have to
    handle bugs without the coresponding tools.
  - don't use the BTS, but the bug tracking system from the DDTP:
    works only for pkg descriptions, debconf templates (?), and so, but not
    for man pages, program messages, and so on.
  - http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ddp-policy/ch-feedback.en.html
    This is specifically designed for documentation, but does not take
    several translation issues into account.


Here we are. Now, there is two solutions. Either each team continue to
search its own trick on its side, and we continue to hack like we do now, or
we do speak between translation coordinators to see which solution could be
developped, and we try to organize ourselves as a debian-l10n team, using
the same well designed methods for the well known issues.


That's up to you, guys.

Bye, Mt.


On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:12:51AM +0100, Martin Quinson wrote:
> Let's keep on debian-i18n until we (translators) all agree on what is needed.
> 
> First of all, I changed my mind a bit, and now think that the right name for
> the pseudo package to be created should be qa-<language>, with the language
> name being written with all letters, not iso code. I guess that it will make
> clear for maintainer what it is good for, and is easy enough to remeber for
> users (IMHO).
> 
> On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 01:54:25PM -0200, Gustavo Noronha Silva wrote:
> > Em Mon, 27 Jan 2003 14:06:09 +0100, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña
> > <jfs@computer.org> escreveu:
> > 
> > > On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 04:03:39PM +0100, Martin Quinson wrote:
> > > > As coordinator of the french translation team, we would like to ask for the
> > > > creation of a new pseudo package in the BTS. It would be called l10n-french,
> > > > and would be made to repport problems in french translations.
> > > 
> > > 	I'm not convinced this is a good idea for several reasons. The main
> > > one being that the BTS already holds a place for translation bugs, but that
> > > really depends on what the translation is _about_:
> > > 
> > > 1.- is it a debconf template? then the package that included it should be
> > > bugged.
> > > 2.- is it a document that it's included in a package? then the package
> > > should be bugged (sample: doc-debian-fr)
> > > 3.- is the document not available in the package? Then file a bug against
> > > debian-doc
> > > 4.- is it a manpage? Is it packaged with the program: bug the program, is
> > > it not? bug manpages-XX (XX=es|fr|pt...)
> > 
> > That would work if we had official translators for every piece of software,
> > doc or template we translate. Someone who could keep monitoring his "packages".
> 
> For that, we need that dpkg supports some translator-XX: fields, and
> something like proposed in
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/debian-devel-200108/msg02329.html
> to be implemented. But for now, it looks like science-fiction to me.
> 
> > Our reality is quite differente... we have quite few translators for a lot
> > of resources and a centralized way to receive and store translation bugs
> > is something that would help us a lot.
> > 
> > Michael Brammer helped us a lot by creating the DDTP, it has a nice centralized
> > bug reporting interface. But still, people need to know how to use the DDTP
> > to "report a bug".
> 
> And bugs against the DDTP can't port on manpages or web pages, or did I miss
> something?
> 
> > As reporting bugs to the BTS is already known to lots of users it would help
> > us a lot if we had a l10n-pt pseudo-package, for example, with
> > debian-l10n-portuguese as the maintainer.
> > 
> > So, a user could report:
> > 
> > "manpage X on package Y has 'usuários' spelled 'usurios'"
> 
> They could even repport against qa-french something like
> « la page de manuel X du paquet Y orthographie 'errreure' au lieu de 'erreur' »
> 
> No other system but a specialized pseudo-package can allow the users to
> repport translation bug in their own language.
> 
> > And the translators would quickly know about that bug, and we would have
> > sane archiving of old and new bugs. If, instead, someone reports this to
> > the package Y, we would depend on the maintainer doing work for us, and
> > we already know not all maintainers are helpful on i18n matters =P.
> > 
> > We do not have manpower to monitor lots of bug pages.
> 
> Agreed. And even more, maintainers faced to a translation bug could reassign
> the bug to the corresponding qa-xxxx package, then the translators provide a
> patch and reassign it to the original package for patch integration.
> 
> > > I would like you, first, to read the proposal on how to bug documentation
> > > packages (and translations) we've been working on at debian-doc. Please
> > > read http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ddp-policy/ch-feedback.en.html
> > >
> > > This is not yet policy (it's a draft).
> 
> I did read this proposal, and it looks very good for documentation issues.
> FYI, we already send ITT mails on the debian-l10n-french, but we never
> trusted ourselves to send them as bug against the WNPP, since most of the
> time those mails are in french, and we don't want to polute the already
> heavily loaded WNPP bug page with our cruft. As result, we have no list of
> made ITT, and I guess than some of them were forgotten.
> 
> I do not agree with the following sentence of your proposal: "Translators
> <em>must</em> be subscribed to the BTS for the translated package versions."
> It's already hard enough to recruit translators and reviewers, but if I ask
> them to monitor a whole bunch of unrelated bug repports, it's an impossible
> task. The remark of Gustavo about lacking manpower applies well here.
> 
> The graph at the end of the chapter seems to suffer of buggy
> TAB-to-space-conversion.
> 
> Moreover, this graph do not take the updating of translation when original
> is update into account. You may want to check po4a for that. Such a graph is
> presented at:
> http://www.nongnu.org/po4a/#graphical_summary
> 
> As a conclusion, I *think* you should remove everything about translation
> from this proposal, since what you say here is not enough, and wait until we
> agree on methods shared by all teams on this list before we try to document
> them. 
> 
> I naturally tend to think that po4a may be a really usefull tool here. ;)
> http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/po4a
> 
> > > However, I _do_ see the need for a new BTS tag: 'translation'. This could
> > > probably make package maintainer's life easier as well as PTS subscribers
> > > to packages which only want to see translation bugs.
> > 
> > That would help, but a 'translation' bug could happen in any language,
> > and it would suck having to browse translation bugs for all languages
> > to find bugs reported on mine.
> 
> I already asked for this tag, back in october 2001. This is #114221.
> But AJ was not convinced, and since no translators gave their advice, I
> convinced myself that I was wrong. Now, a year and half after, I tend to
> agree with Gustavo. Such tag could be helpfull, but that's not the
> definitive solution. I guess i'll close my old bug repport.
> 
> Bye, Mt.
> 
> -- 
> If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
>           -- Albert Einstein
> 
> 
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-- 
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