Re: Migrate website translations to PO [was: Re: When and how can we migrate out of CVS and WML ?]
Hi!
* Andrei Popescu <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> [2010-08-05 09:17:59 CEST]:
> On Vi, 30 iul 10, 11:15:17, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> >
> > Moving to .po probably needs a coordinated effort including at least the
> > coordinators from all the languages that have more than just a few
> > translated pages.
> >
> > Is there some wiki page about this project? I can start one, but not
> > until tomorrow.
>
> It took a bit longer, but the page is
> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWebsitePO
>
> Input from people familiar with po4a and (other) translators would be
> highly needed.
While some translators are familiar with working on po files I see some
issues that bother me myself when working on po files:
Often parts aren't properly in context, moved around within the po file
and get confusing when only working on the po file. If done carefully
this might be solved but it is something that shouldn't be ignored for
proper decision making.
This is related to that po is for translating more-or-less text
snippets that are meant to be able to stand on their own. Having a text
seperated into multiple strings, with always the english part in between
does IMHO block some quality possibilities of having the text flow
naturally because it doesn't make the final proofreading as easy.
Also, translating longer paragraphs gets annoying, especially when the
original gets changed. It will mark the string as fuzzy and the
translator has to dig around in a longer paragraph about what actually
has changed. One solution to this might be the --previous switch which
keeps the former string in there for comparison -- but are there
translation tools that support that properly and can hilight the changes
in a wdiff form? Maybe I missed some development in that area, feel free
to enlighten me. As long as such a tool isn't available I consider that
as a real issue.
The last issue I see is with the the core way how po works: If it finds
an untranslated or fuzzy string it will put the english original into
the place. This might be something useful for applications to specificly
support work-in-progress approaches and not render a translation invalid
for a string that might only be an error message or such - but then I
don't consider this as an acceptable approach for the website. It would
be quite confusing for people to see a mix of english and their own
language on the same page and switch like from every paragraph to the
next. I *do* consider it better in that cases to have a potential
(minorly) outdated page but completely in the native language than a mix
of english and their language.
Also, in some areas we do encourage adding language specific
information - I'm not too sure how that should work with po4a. Also, in
some specific situations it happened that translators have changed the
formating of a page (like seperating/merging two paragraphs) and it
might make sense for them to keep that possibility. Different languages
do have different representation requirements.
I would like to know how this approach would like to tackle those.
Thanks!
Rhonda
--
"Lediglich 11 Prozent der Arbeitgeber sind der Meinung, dass jeder
Mensch auch ein Privatleben haben sollte."
-- http://www.karriere.at/artikel/884/
Reply to: