Re: Google summer of code: i18n infrastructure
On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 01:25:55PM +0300, Gintautas Miliauskas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> > Is there another page where I can look at the project details? The
> > link you provided to google doesn't work for me; it wants me to create
> > a new profile.
>
> The full text of the proposal, together with a few comments, is also
> available here:
>
> http://gintas.pov.lt/debian/l10n_software/
Hi,
everybody agrees that l10n in Debian has to be improved a lot, thanks for
working on this. I will explain below my view on this topic. This is
not a criticism on your proposal, but rather an informal discussion.
If your proposal is accepted as is, Debian will benefit from your work,
but I believe that it can be even more useful ;)
Here is your introduction:
> At present there are some lightweight procedures in Debian to organize
> localization efforts, but they are not global and different language
> teams use different methods. Translation robots help with
> coordination, basic translation statistics are generated for language
> translation. Some language teams use their own ad-hoc scripts to deal
> with documentation. The DDTP has its own tools to translate package
> descriptions. Generally, there is some infrastructure, but it looks
> like some integration in this area would help increase efficiency.
Yes, this has been discussed several times, teams should work together
to improve efficiency.
Our ultimate goal is not to translate because it is fun, but to provide
translations to our users, so how translated material is published is
an important piece of the whole picture.
You should read the (huge) thread initiated by
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/02/msg01924.html
it is very instructive. The situation has not changed for 3 years,
so your infrastucture will face problems similar to the DDTP if nothing
is planned to work with developers.
In most other large groups, translators have direct access to a
central CVS/SVN repository, but this will not happen in Debian.
The Free Translation Project
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/translation/HTML/
has a different workflow, which can be adapted to your infrastructure.
Maybe there are other ways too.
Several people involved in the thread above reported that l10n is
quite similar to buildd, and an infrastructure similar to
buildd.debian.org could help language coordinators to track ignored
l10n bugs and perform NMUs if necessary. There are new BTS features,
like
http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2006/02/msg00013.html
which can be very helpful.
Of course you cannot implement everything in 3 months, this is not
the point, but IMO we have to keep an eye on the whole picture when
designing a new l10n workflow.
Denis
Reply to: