Re: bug-reporting for non-English users
Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:
> Jutta Wrage wrote:
A part of the effectiveness of the Open Source community is
how we do massively parallel testing. If we move the task
of checking if an error in a program is already known from
the testers to the developers, then this system breaks. So
we have to keep the developer-side of the system looking the
same (just with even more testers reporting errors).
> > - - translate everything related to bug reports
Bug-reports have a completely different time-scale than user
interface texts in the programs (much faster). Can we
handle that enormous extra translation load?
> > - - having a translation service for developers who want
> > to send questions to the bug reporter
That would be useful. That translation intermediary would
already have to be in place for translating the bug-report
to English in the first place.
> > - - having a translation service for people, who want to
> > report a bug and are not able to write it in English
> > or discover, if the bug is already submitted.
Yes.
> 3. If the maintainer gets a bug report in a language that
> is not understood by the maintainer, there should be
> established ways of contacting a translator for the
> language in question to get the bug report translated. To
> facilitate this, a form for reporting bugs should indicate
> the language used for reporting .
The maintainer should _never_ get bug-reports in other
languages than English. (at least not in that role)
Bug-reports written in other languages than English should
automatically be directed to a bug-report translation group
for that language. This group will then have the
responsibility for verifying that it is a new bug, for
reporting the bug in English to the maintainer (and the bug
database) and for acting as an intermediary between the
maintainer and the reporter on continued discussion about
the bug.
It may be useful, if we can extend the database of known
errors, such that it can contain translations of the reports
as well. I am not sure how good a use of the translators'
time it is to translate (open) bug-reports, but if we can
seed it with machine translations, then that may be enough
to help testers with finding out if _their_ errors really
are new.
Jacob
--
"It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the
tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved
by a sufficiently large ego."
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