On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 1:08 AM, Miloslav Trmač <mitr@volny.cz> wrote:
Hello,
Ankitkumar Rameshchandra Patel píše v St 14. 01. 2009 v 20:16 +0530:
> I am using Fedora 9 system on my personal machine and do not want to
> upgrade to Fedora 10 or rawhide. Recently, I found some translation
> mistakes for some Fedora packages, and want to update the translation
> for those packages packages for Fedora 9 and make it upstream.
That rarely works.

Most packages have upstream either a simple release sequence with no
branches, or they have branches that depend on the release cycle of the
package.  The upstream release cycles are very rarely synchronized with
any distribution (GNOME in Fedora is a sort-of-but-not-really exception)
- and there are many distributions to synchronize with :)

In other words, if you want to update translations of a 1 year old
package, upstream is not very likely to be interested in branching the
package for your distribution version and creating new releases specific
for your distribution.

Maintaining the older versions of a package and backporting any code
fixes is the distribution's job.  The package maintainer of a
distribution may collaborate with upstream on the fix (e.g. submit it to
the upstream "head" version as well), but to fix a package on an older
release of the distribution, the fix is committed on the distribution's
branch of the package, not on upstream branch (there usually isn't any
upstream branch).

I can't see why the same mechanism shouldn't work for translations as
well: Just create an updated .po file (or a patch that only changes a
few specific messages), file a bug at bugzilla.redhat.com asking for a
package update that uses that .po file.  This doesn't let you use
transifex's statistics or submission interface - but (at least in
Fedora), translations are very rarely updated for older versions.  (I
guess most translators can find a lot of work that needs doing on the
main branch.)
       Mirek

Perhaps a case for linking the Translation Infrastructure directly with the package build system?

For instance, if the package NetworkManager 0.7 had a translation error, the translator could log in to the web-based translation system and locate NetworkManager 0.7 and change the string there. The translation system would have already imported the latest details from the package-system, including the PO file in the NetworkManager sources. When the translation is approved, the translation system would automatically submit a bug report against the package in bugzilla, requesting a package-update with the patch to the PO file. At the same time, if the string is still in HEAD, the translation system would automatically update the translation there (ensuring that translations are committed upstream).

Just a thought.

cheers,
asgeir