[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Preview of the i18n and l10n paper for Debcon6

Hi,

Here is a review.

I tried to fix some English typos. I'm not a native speaker. In case of
doubt, I recommend to keep your version ;)

I've also added some comments (so this patch may not be meant to be
applied as is).


A question regarding the English supremacy:
Should a centralised L10N infrastructure allow translating document
which were not originally written in English?
(e.g. in the web site, some pages could be first written in German and
then translated to English (this tranbslation becomes or not the master
document); then translators could translate the page according to the
German or English versions)


Other subjects that comes to my mind:
 * XLIFF, translation memories


Thanks for your work,
-- 
Nekral

--- debian-i18n-l10n.xml.orig	2006-04-06 00:45:43.000000000 +0200
+++ debian-i18n-l10n.xml	2006-04-06 01:54:20.000000000 +0200
@@ -40,6 +40,11 @@
     <author>
       <firstname>Javier</firstname> <surname>Fernández-Sanguino
 	Peña</surname>
+<!--
+NOTE that your name is not displayed correctly on the PDF version 
+Fern&aacute;ndez should be better for the PDF version.
+For the 'ñ', there should at least be a &#xxxx; entity
+-->
       <affiliation>
 	<orgname>The Debian Project</orgname>
 	<address><email>jfs@debian.org</email></address>
@@ -56,7 +61,7 @@
     <date>March 2006</date>
     <copyright>
       <year>2006</year>
-      <holder>Authors: Christian Perrier, Javier Fern&aacute;ndez-Sanguino</holder>
+      <holder>Authors: Christian Perrier, Javier Fern&aacute;ndez-Sanguino <!-- Missing Peña? --></holder>
     </copyright>
     <copyright>
       <year>2006</year>
@@ -290,6 +295,10 @@
   manpages translations are handled, see <xref
   linkend="manpages-l10n"/>.</para>
 
+  <!--
+  GNU info does not provide any infrastructure to display localised info pages.
+  -->
+
 </section>
 
 <section><title>I18N &amp; L10N FAQ for maintainers</title>
@@ -439,7 +448,7 @@
     <title>Translation of the Debian website</title>
 
     <para>A project website is often used as the primary
-    information source for the both the users of a program and to
+    information source for both the users of a program and to
     people who want to learn about it but don't use it
     yet. Information at a project's website is usually a complement of the
     documentation available through other means.
@@ -806,7 +815,7 @@
 
 <para>Common practice is sending these bug reports with severity "wishlist".</para>
 
-<para>Another common practice is using a standardised bug title: "&gt;package&lt;:
+<para>Another common practice is using a standardised bug title: "&lt;package&gt;:
 [intl:&lt;code&gt;] &lt;Language&gt; debconf templates translation", where
 &lt;package&gt; is the source package name, &gt;code&lt; the language ISO code and
 &gt;Language&lt; is the language name in English.
@@ -815,7 +824,7 @@
 <para>
 Here's an example of reporting the French translation of the
 <command>geneweb</command> package. Of course, in the example below,
-<command>geneweb</command> shoul dbe replaced by the appropriate
+<command>geneweb</command> should be replaced by the appropriate
 package name:</para>
 
 <informalexample>
@@ -925,7 +934,7 @@
       and a long one (of variable length). The first one describes
       briefly what the package does and the second one describes its
       main functionalities, characteristics, differences with other
-      software, etc. This information is vital for users that are
+      software, etc. This information is vital for users who are
       looking for a given functionality within the (huge) quantity of
       software provided in the Debian distribution. The package
       management tools include interfaces to do word (or regular
@@ -1002,7 +1011,7 @@
 
     <para>A common need for users installing a Debian system is to end
     up with a fully localised system that does not need to be set up
-    in order to be useful for users that require a given locale for
+    in order to be useful for users who require a given locale for
     being supported. Besides having a fully I18n Debian Installer
     there are several things that help set up an internationalised
     Debian system.</para>
@@ -1106,8 +1115,8 @@
   installer.</para>
 
   <para>New i18n scripts need to be written also for programs such as:
-  <command>locale-purge</command> (<filename>/etc/locale.nopurge</filename>, TeX/LaTeX (
-  including hyphenation rules defined at
+  <command>locale-purge</command> (<filename>/etc/locale.nopurge</filename>, TeX/LaTeX
+  (including hyphenation rules defined at
   <filename>/etc/texmf/language.dat</filename>), console settings (including
   <filename>/etc/inputrc</filename> and the console keymap by preseeding <command>console-common</command>), Mutt (locale and
   charset at <filename>/etc/Muttrc</filename>), Mozilla's Firebird (same
@@ -1231,7 +1240,7 @@
 
     <listitem><para>SGML documents are usually written in a single
     (big) file. Since translation teams are typically created in order
-    to handle (big) documents this means that the translation
+    to handle (small) documents this means that the translation
     coordinator has to break up the original file in chunks;</para></listitem>
 
     <listitem><para>Translators cannot directly use the tools they are
@@ -1412,6 +1421,25 @@
   translation, which translations are out of date, translated or
   untranslated and who is the last translator of the manpage.</para>
 
+  <!-- There are also other I18N issues for some languages:
+    * lexgrog only support some languages.
+    * Whatis and apropos are badly internationalise.
+    * man-db does not build indexes of the translated manpages
+    * man does not support some encodings (I don't remember if this is the
+      input or output encoding). This affect the Vietnameses pages. Some work
+      has been done regarding this subject with groff-utf8.
+
+    http://manpages.debian.net can be used to find manpages of a
+    Debian system, but it does not reference translated man pages.
+
+    Man pages translations are often done by team, which are not based on one
+    distribution. This tends to distribute translations that does not
+    correspond to the version/software distributed in debian.  (e.g. su is
+    provided by shadow, and some of the su.1 translations describe coreutils'
+    su).
+
+  -->
+
   </section><!-- Issues with manpages translations -->
 
   <section><title>Translation of Debian manpages</title>
@@ -1458,7 +1486,7 @@
   <variablelist>
  
   <varlistentry><term>Manpage</term> <listitem><para>document's name in the CVS
-  repository, may be different than the one in the source
+  repository, may be different from the one in the source
   package. This is used as the document ID.</para></listitem></varlistentry>
 
   <varlistentry><term>Encoding</term><listitem><para>Document's
@@ -1515,12 +1543,12 @@
   <ulink
   url="http://www.debian.org/international/spanish/ltcp/"/>.</para></footnote>
   in order to coordinate the translation of the Debian Documentation
-  Project published manuals. This management system was based off a
+  Project published manuals. This management system was based on a
   flat database that included the available documents in the DDTP
   system and the status of translations. With the use of Perl scripts,
   this database was converted into HTML files that were published on
   the website so that the translation team could see which documents
-  were being worked on and who was coordination the
+  were being worked on and who was coordinating the
   translation.</para>
 
   <para>This system was not integrated with the document database
@@ -1615,7 +1643,7 @@
     as packages defined as part of the D-I "levels" of translation
     (FIXME: reference to DC5 talk).</para>
 
-    <para>These pages point to the individuals packages RCS
+    <para>These pages point to the individual packages RCS
     directories and archives. They give translators a more accurate
     view of work to do and immediately reflect applied changes.</para>
 
@@ -1679,7 +1707,7 @@
   teams including Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, and German.</para>
 
   <para>The translation coordination robot is an e-mail robot that
-  "listens" to the mails send to the translation teams mailing lists
+  "listens" to the mails sent to the translation teams mailing lists
   (debian-l10n-XXXX) and looks for a set of pseudo-urls in the
   messages' subjects. These pseudo-urls are composed of a translation
   status and a translation item (see <xref linkend="pseudo_urls"/>). The
@@ -1707,8 +1735,8 @@
   url="http://www.debian.org.es/cgi-bin/l10n.cgi?team=es";>Spanish
   translation coordination robot</ulink>, <ulink
   url="http://dutch.debian.net/";>Dutch translation coordination
-  robot</ulink>, <ulink url="http://ca.debian.net/";>Catalonia-n
-  translation coordination robot</ulink>. These lasts robots, instead
+  robot</ulink>, <ulink url="http://ca.debian.net/";>Catalonian
+  translation coordination robot</ulink>. These last robots, instead
   of crawling the web site, use real e-mail addresses which are
   subscribed to the team's mailing lists and handle messages in real
   time through procmail filters that filter this information to the
@@ -1723,8 +1751,8 @@
   <listitem><para>First, a translation needs to be done when there is
   a new (untranslated) item or document. Typically, the translation team coordinator asks somebody in the team to work on it;</para></listitem>
 
-  <listitem><para>Then, a member of the translation teams answers by
-  saying that they will work in that item;</para></listitem>
+  <listitem><para>Then, a member of the translation team answers by
+  saying that (s)he will work on that item;</para></listitem>
 
 
   <listitem><para>Once the translator finishes the translation (s)he
@@ -1750,9 +1778,9 @@
 
   </itemizedlist>
 
-  <para>When the original item (document, wml or PO file) the cycle
+  <para>When the original item (document, wml or PO file) is modified, the cycle
   starts again. However, in that case, the last translator
-  that worked on it is considered upstream's point of contact (he
+  who worked on it is considered upstream's point of contact ((s)he
   should be contacted whenever there is a need to update the
   translation). The last translator is also typically considered as the
   maintainer for upstream's translations so there is no need to tell
@@ -2105,7 +2133,7 @@
 
       <para>The GNU project supports different groups of
       internationalisation. These groups are coordinated by a person
-      in charge of the translation team.  There is no requirement,
+      in charge of the translation team.  There is no requirements,
       however, to provide constant dedication within a translation
       group. Translation can be a discrete effort. The existence of
       these groups, however, guarantees the revision of these discrete
@@ -2172,13 +2200,12 @@
   them and collected in a new PO file.
   </para>
 
-  <para>Because documentation files are usually of very various
-  formats and translation states, the conversion of existing
-  translations cannot have enough intelligence to do the right
-  extraction, especially when translations are utterly outdated. The
-  <classname>po4a-gettextize</classname> tools only extracts the Nth
+  <para>
+  The <classname>po4a-gettextize</classname> tool only extracts the Nth
   string from the translated file and matches it to the Nth string of
-  the original file in the created PO file.  </para>
+  the original file in the created PO file. It verifies that the original
+  document and the translated documents have the same structure, but can't
+  detect the state of the translation.  </para>
 
   <para>Because some manual expertise by translators is then required,
   all extracted strings are marked as "fuzzy" by the
@@ -2194,10 +2221,16 @@
 $ po4a-gettextize -f man -m the_manpage -p foo.po
   </screen></informalexample>
 
+     <para>Or if an existing translation exists:</para>
+
+  <informalexample><screen>
+$ po4a-gettextize -f man -m the_manpage -p foo.po -l existing_translation
+  </screen></informalexample>
+
      <para>PO files can be converted back to manpages with:</para>
 
   <informalexample><screen>
-$ po4a-translate -f man -m the_original_manpage -p the_PO_file -l
+$ po4a-translate -f man -m the_original_manpage -p the_PO_file -l translated_manpage
   </screen></informalexample>
 
   <para>Upstream authors can use the following Makefile to translate
@@ -2298,6 +2331,15 @@
 
   </section><!-- of converting manpages to PO4a -->
 
+  <!--
+
+  This section could mention the supported formats: KernelHelp, Man, Pod, Sgml, Dia, LaTeX, Xml
+
+  And tools similar to po4a (poxml, translate-toolkit (these ones are alredy
+  mentioned in this document IIRC), gnome-doc-utils)
+
+  -->
+
   </section><!-- of converting to PO4a -->
 
     <section id="po4a-for-doc">
@@ -2311,7 +2353,7 @@
 
   <para>Po4a tools allow defining a minimum translation ratio below
   which the translated document will not be generated anymore or will
-  only contain the original language. This avoids generating documents
+  only contain the original strings. This avoids generating documents
   with too few translated strings but still allows the publication of
   complete translations. As a consequence, translated documents may
   still contain some strings in the original language. This tries to
@@ -2320,7 +2362,7 @@
   <para>This behaviour is a big improvement for documents such as
   manual pages. Indeed, an argument often used for not using these
   translations is the lack of guarantee that the translations are
-  in sync with the original man pages. The po4a tools raise this
+  in sync with the original man pages. The po4a tools lower this
   argument, the price being sometimes mixed man pages, though.
   </para>
 
@@ -2625,6 +2667,12 @@
 <command>reportbug</command> then drops the user into a text editor to fill in the bug text. There is usually no need to be very verbose there as most informations are obvious.
 </para>
 
+<!-- 
+Sometimes, when there are multiple PO in the package, it could be nice to
+specify which PO is updated (something like "debconf PO", or specifying the
+path: debian/po/fr.po).
+-->
+
 <para>
 Finally, the translation file should be attached to the bug report
 (<command>reportbug</command> is clever enough to warn users when a
Reply to: