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Re: package description translation: where to drop hints?



Quoting Gerfried Fuchs (rhonda@deb.at):

>  -) Given that it was recently raised that the English package
> descriptions might be low quality in its orginal state already, it is
> even more needed that translators see themself as proof readers and _do_
> contact the package maintainers and send them on suggestions,
> improvements and fixes. These includes but shouldn't be limited to
> formating mistakes: double spacing when there is no pre-formated wanted,
> single spacing when pre-formated is expected to happen, incomplete
> sentences, things along that lines, ...
> 
>  These hints have to go somewhere into a FAQ/HOWTO section on the
> translation interfaces.

I see two directions to go, here, probably:

- link some documentation about The Right Way to write packages
descriptions: we already have the Developer's Reference where some
improvement could be done to cover the issues you're pointing. We also
have pages on the Debian Wiki (these haven't been revisited for quite
some time) about English reviews
(http://wiki.debian.org/I18n/SmithReviewProject)


- offer a way, through the DDTSS to easily report issues to
maintainers. The trickiest part is probably not reinventing the wheel:
after all, we already have the BTS for this..:-) (which of course
makes it mandatory to avoid anonymous contributions....and probably
improve the login/registration system in the DDTSS to at least include
a mail address contact


> 
> 
>  -) When the package maintainer wants to leave hints to the translators,
> for PO files there is this possibility available, but how to do that for
> package translations? The control files do offer the possibility to
> insert comments - is there any way to extract them and display them to
> translators in any way?

As of now, I'm afraid there is no such way, no. Implementation is
probably needed in DDTP code, so what we mostly need would be someone
doing the job..:)

>  As maintainer of the wesnoth packages, the hint I'd like to drop: The
> introduction paragraph of the campaigns comes directly from the PO files
> for the campaigns and are already translated therein. It would be
> *perfect* if the translation for that could somehow get pulled from
> there nstead of staring from scratch again and potentially translating
> into a completely different direction or wording style.

Hmmm, well, that's a use case where having description translations
*inside* the packages (and based on gettext) would help. The problem
is that, whether we like this or not, we went another way...

>  I hope this makes up partly for my recent annoyance on the list, please
> excuse it and try to understand my frustration that built up over time
> instead of accounting it to bad-will.

Oh well. I probably also suffer from some frustration when I see that
the DDT* things are not as well maintained and monitored as they
should be.... Not really blaming original authors (everybody is
entitled to move their interests elsewhere)...just frustrated to see
that there are problems (nothing synced since March 18th) or wished
enhancements....and we can't manage to find anyone really jumping in
that boat.

(I just can't, particularly if it comes at designing or writing code)

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