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

[Laurent Defours <laurent.defours@laposte.net>]

Hi !

Apologies are due for the thread in french in which you were not cc'ed.
So impolite as it may seems, though, you adressed to the french
translation team as a whole, and I think every people who jumped in this
thread were willing to adopt a common standpoint on this issue before
you would be given an "official" reply from the french translation team.

I reviewed the apache-ssl description, which is identical to this one.
And I approved the layout change. But I understand your point and partly
agree.

> I do not understand why the previous translation was alligned to our
> layout and noone is still able to give me an answer about this.

Denis told earlier the itemized list is the _preferred_ format for a
long list and that's all there is to it. This is in no way mandatory.
Most people seem to think this format is better for the reader. I do. As
Jean-Philippe noted, there is no grammatical difference between this
format and the comma-separated one. Both are correct, which doesn't mean
both are equally efficient to ease the reading, but I don't like the
"french exception" standing as I am pretty sure that most languages, if
not all, are able to distinguish between itemized lists and inline ones.

So the sort answer is: the layout changed because someone had the idea
to change it and the others thought the new one was better.

> If you really believe that the apache description should be improved than
> you file a bug against apache asking to changing layout, proposing the
> better one so that everyone can be alligned to it.

I totally agree with you on this point. The other languages should
beneficiate from the improvement (we obviously think it's an improvement
since we approved it) and a bug report should have been filed. At least
the maintainer would be aware of it and decide if this is a french-only
issue or if it's relevant for the english (and possibly other) version.

Now the question is: do (or should) the maintainer have authority on the
translations ?

> from the translator point of view you should only translate. That's what i
> do when i submit italian translation. If have a concern about anything
> else i ask the maintainer. prove that I am wrong.

Granted, but "only translate" is much more than just taking each word
and putting an equivalent from the dictionnary. You often have to
organize things differently if you want the translation appear as a
native work to the readers.

> > Generaly speeking, we (people aware of l10n and i18n) believe that the
> > maintainer's job is not to deal with these issues. Translators are
> > bored to fix maintainers mistakes. Moreover, I believe that a maintainer
> > should not loose his time on l10n.
> 
> Yes we do.
> 
> just an examoke:
> 
> http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/ch-best-pkging-practices.en.html#s-bpp-pkg-desc
> 
> "The long description should consist of full and complete sentences."
> 
> I miss to see how a list can fullfil this reference.

Maybe it would help to know why this recommendation is given in the
first place ? Do the itemized list format break anything (nobody seems
to be aware of it) ? Or is it just to avoid having descriptions lazily
written, without verbs and so on ?

The itemized list is still a "full and complete sentence" anyway.

> > The question is Why do you want to have its layout alligned with the
> > others ?
> 
> I could simply ask you the question the other way around: why do you want
> to be different from all the others? but it's a chicken & egg stupid game.
> 
> The reason is simple. The DD decide the layout and the descriptio and it
> is responsable for it again the community and the users, no matter in
> which language. All the others cope with our layout and i don't see any
> language barrier that does not permit you to do so.

The real question is: who is responsible of what ?

The translators should be absolutely responsible of their work, in my
opinion, and bugs concerning translations should go to them, not to the
maintainer. If any team decide not to cope with your layout, it should
be their problem, not yours. And they should be able to manage the
complaints, if any.

Laurent