Re: Reviews of debconf templates
Martin's original point was about being notified of translations needing work in the "Top 500", presumably the 500 most popular or key Debian packages.
Please see my comments below the quoted text.
On 06/04/2010, at 5:34 AM, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> Hello Martin,
> On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 08:18:33PM +0000, Martin Eberhard Schauer wrote:
>>> package descriptions are completely stand alone, they are not stored
>>> in the package at all. You can translate them completely independent
>>> of the rest of the package.
>>>
>> They are a part of the /debian/control files of the source packages.
>
> Yes, the original version as well. And IMHO it gets reviewed as well
> on debian-l10n-english. But the translation is *not* stored in the
> package.
>
>>> If you look on the ddtp statistics pages you can yourself determine
>>> which package descriptions are untranslated and after translating (and
>>> getting the reviews, if you work through the web interface) it will
>>> appear automatically, no involvment of maintainers or NMUers necessary
>>> (nor sensible).
>>>
>> I think i am familiar with ddtp because i contribute there for some
>> time. It _is_ easy just to request some new descriptions and
>> translate some of them. But when i want to focus on something, the
>> easyst thing is keeping the Top 500 up to date. Up to now i don't know
>> an easy way e.g. to look for the untranslated descriptions ranked
>> between 700 and 900 or to search packages with revised templates
>> without translated description.
>>
>> I believe there is interest in searching packages that match some
>> translation criteria:
>> http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2010/03/msg00057.html
>>
>> The script has been used by some Italian team people and he can help to:
>> * automatic fetch package in http://ddtp.debian.net/ site
>> * identify packages that can have translated paragraphs
>> * identify packages that need to be translated and have only few text
>> rows
>
>> Perhaps this script would not have been necessary to develop if
>> there would have been an easy means for querying the ddtp database.
>>
>> Considering your objection a bit, i think that you are right. My
>> wish should not extend other peoples workload, but i would still
>> appreciate an opportunity to investigate the translation statistics
>> in more depth.
>
> I'm not objecting, I just state that such a coupling is not feasible.
> If scripts and/or web statistics can be improved, please go ahead and
> post patches etc.
This is an issue that has importance for me. How do we know where our efforts are most effectively allocated? Should I be spending my time translating every debconf template in existence, or is it more useful to Debian if I work on certain package descriptions, package strings or docs?
How do we know what should be translated before others?
Christian does a terrific job of keeping us on track for D-I, as does Frans for the D-I Manual, and we still get (I hope!) reminders for the Release Notes and Reference Card.
Developers are starting to request package translations on this list and via po-debconf. So I translate the ones requested on the list. For all I know, there are much "higher priority" apps needing translation.
So how _do_ we find out where our localization effort is best allocated? How do we get an overall picture of a package's translation status: package descriptions, debconf, program strings and docs?
For example, could we sign up to an RSS update or script update which notifies us regularly of the status of our language regarding the "Top 500" packages?
___________________________________
DATE results for the LANGUAGE translation status of the top 500 Debian packages
No. Package name Description Program Manpage Other docs
1. Sex for Robots [1] 0/3 0/16 0/35 0/99
...
__________________________________
I have hitherto neglected the sex education of robots, and would adjust my priorities.
Once we start translating for a particular package, we could also sign up to its RSS for update notifications, or this could be handled (could it?) via po-debconf.
I've found the D-I stats emails, the po-debconf update emails and the reminders on this list (in that order) extremely helpful: I'd just like to see it taken a bit further, if possible. I think getting more effective and more regular translation stats on packages and their composite files was Martin's original point. Can it be done?
from Clytie
Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team
[1] According to our respected Minister for Broadband in Australia, the Internet is almost completely populated by pr0n and its dubious devotees. To protect robots, we must implement mandatory national Internet censorship.
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