Re: Do not touch l10n files (was Re: DDTP issue)

[Yannick Roehlly <yannick.roehlly@free.fr>]

Dear Debian fellows,

In France,  we have  an expression that  says "a  storm in a  glass of
water". I sincerely think we are in such a case.

Let  me summarise  what  happened, according  to  what I  read on  the
debian-l10-french list.

Once,  there was a  description for  the Apache  package using  a long
coma-separated  list  for the  apache  modules  both  in the  original
description and in the French translation.

Then, the apache maintainers changed the description only changing the
PHP3  in  PHP.  What  bother  Fabio Massimo  is  that  the new  French
translation goes  further and  also changes the  layout of  the module
list.

I'm sure being a package maintainer is like taking care of a baby and,
as a good  father, you feel very concerned  even with the translations
of your baby. This honours you but...

Fabio Massimo, you say :

> Yes we are [unhappy with the new translation since in the first place we 
> asked nicely to change the layout
> back to the original one (as it was before this translation) and then you
> jumped in with some fancy reasons and even after 3/4 attempts to explain
> to you why the layout has to be changed back you were not able to
> understand them, 

I'm sorry, but you never explained  - at least on the french l10n list
- why the layout  of the translation had to be  changed. You only said
that  the maintainers  are  responsible  of the  layout  and that  you
dislike the new one so it has to be changed.

Dear maintainers,  are the layouts  of the translations  so important?
Maybe sometimes a strange layout  can cause technical problems for its
displaying, but  I don't think  coma-separated list vs.  itemised list
worth the fight.



Furthermore,  theses  mails  rise  the problem  of  conflicts  between
maintainers and translators about translations.

I am not a real Debian translator (do I loose all credibility for what
I said before? ;-). I'm just a proof-reader.

I agree  that the English version  of a Debian document  should be the
"official"  one,  because  it's  expected  to be  understood  by  most
people. But  when you  have to  translate a text,  you are  facing two
sorts of  problems: the specific  requirements of your  language (like
non-breaking spaces  in French) and  the "in my language,  we'd rather
say this in that way". Thus,  if we want to make a _good_ translation,
and I'm  sure everybody  wants it  here, we often  have to  make large
changes in  the translation.  I can  tell you that  we are  making big
effort to be sure not to pervert the initial sense of the text.

Is  it  a problem?  Shouldn't  the  maintainers  be confident  in  the
translators and their work?

I'm sure we are here to walk  together to make Debian a good (well, in
fact a  better, it's yet very  good) distribution. So lets  not make a
storms in glass of water.

Communautairement, (fellowshiply ?)

Yannick