Fedora 34 Change: Localization measurement and tooling (Self-Contained Change proposal)

[Ben Cotton]

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/LocalizationMeasurementAndTooling


== Summary ==

Provide a public website for end users and contributors, containing
Fedora Workstation translation progress and useful files for
translators (as an example: translation memories).

== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:jibecfed|Jean-Baptiste Holcroft]],
[[User:darknao|Francois Andrieu]]
* Email: <jean-baptiste(a)holcroft.fr&gt;



== Detailed Description ==

Language support is a transversal activity, there is no way to know
the actual language support provided by Fedora as an Operating System.

Because language support and translations are part of each upstream
software, the Linux language community is as spread as the Free Libre
and Open Source community is.

The ability to share efforts is limited (with data, tools, etc.):

* because of the complexity to get an overview of the current
localization status of the Linux community,
* because translators often have a low level of technical knowledge,
* because development experts are more keen to use English by default,
and don't know much about languages support requirements.

Debian did something similar (20 years ago)
https://www.debian.org/international/l10n/ . But this work:

* is limited in terms of features (no translation memories there)
* is too deeply integrated with Debian infrastructure (data
extraction, computation and website generation are 100% debian
specific)
* is using a programming language that doesn't allow to share easily
with existing i18n/l10n libraries (it did not exist 20 years ago)


== Benefit to Fedora ==
It is a progress for the project: provide a new tool to translator community.

It helps the Linux community to better understand the language support
challenges.

It increases contributors effectiveness by providing translation
memories and other tools.

These translation memories open new possibilities:

* to train machines to suggest new translations?
* to detect quality issues (spellcheck, linters, etc)?
* the change the way we ship translations to users? (Ubuntu does it,
but never bring back translation to main project)
* to advertise user that Linux is available in many languages?

== Scope ==

All of the work is isolated, as long as dnf works, the automation
works. The closer to mirror the cheaper it is for network cost (all
Fedora is downloaded at each execution).

* Proposal owners:
** [[User:Darknao|Francois Andrieu]] integrate the existing scripts
into containers to allow execution into openshift
** Infra team:
*** provide some space for script execution (50 GB per release)
*** provide the languages.fedoraproject.org domain name
*** provide a location for static website (about 2 GB per release, may
increase over time)

* Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
* Release engineering: N/A
* Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with mission: ''In our community, contributors of all
kinds come together to advance the ecosystem for the benefit of
everyone.''

== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
N/A (not a System Wide Change)

== How To Test ==
N/A (not a System Wide Change)

== User Experience ==


== Dependencies ==
N/A (not a System Wide Change)

== Contingency Plan ==
* Contingency mechanism: (What to do?  Who will do it?) N/A (not a
System Wide Change)
* Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

== Documentation ==
A draft with simplistic template is there:
https://jibecfed.fedorapeople.org/partage/fedora-localization-statistics/...

Code and "documentation" are there:
https://pagure.io/fedora-localization-statistics

About other project:

* Debian's code to build website with language progress:
https://salsa.debian.org/webmaster-team/webwml/-/commits/master/english/i...
* Ubuntu's code to build langpacks:
https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-langpack/langpack-o-matic/main/files
** Note: ubuntu does provide language progress in launchpad:
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu and some useful
documentation is there: https://dev.launchpad.net/Translations


-- 
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Senior Program Manager, Fedora & CentOS Stream
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis