Message: 10 Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:46:24 -0400 From: "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com Subject: Re: Please add all the guys who helped in translation to the colophon of install-guide To: fedora-trans-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 20090427144624.GB619@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 09:06:56AM +0800, Tian Shixiong wrote:
I agree with Domingo Becker, his suggestion of adding the people to the colophon. Because many people have contributed to the translation(now or before), but only a few of them were listed in the install-guide. Please consider to do this, if it is possible. :-)
I have a suggestion -- let's simply include "Fedora Documentation Team" and "Fedora Translation Team" on the authorship. The authorship could include a link to a specific wiki page where specific contributors could be included. That way each team can take care of updating the appropriate links, and anyone can help with the updates. Otherwise, speaking as someone who used to try to maintain these long lists, we're probably creating a headache.
-- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
2009/4/27 Tian Shixiong tiansworld@gmail.com:
Well, I think the suggestion is a good idea. And also this can make the list shorter :-)
You're right Tian, maybe the list would become long now. It wasn't long a couple of years ago. Some day we will have at least 4 active translator for every language and the list would be [1] 86 x 4 = 344 lines long (6 A4 pages at least).
One solution is Paul's option 2 in [2]. With a small addition. For the Spanish translation it's only necessary to know who wrote the document and who translated it into Spanish. In the Spanish version it's not necessary to know who translated it to Chinese (Simplified) or to Zulu, there's a very small chance that a Spanish speaking person would read it, or even care about it. This addition would work the same as the translator-credits string of other modules, that has been discussed in this list back in 2006 and 2007. That string has the names of the people and the year they worked with the module as a translator. As a result, the name of the people who translated to the actual language only appears in "Help -> About -> Credits -> Translated by" of system-config-printer, for example. In Spanish, you only see the Spanish translators, not the others. By the way, not every module honours that string, but that's another subject.
I think of the list as a way to say "thanks" to the people who helped with the translations. Remember it's a free work. It's also a way to bring more people to be active translators. The install-guide, for example, is 3653 strings long. If we have 25 string in an A4 page, it would be 146 pages long. How do you ask somebody to help you translate such a big document for free? A way I used is to tell people that their names will be somewhere in the guide.
The maintenance work of the list is too much work for the editors. I would prefer they spend their time to bring the deployment-guide [3] from RHEL to Fedora, the way they did with install-guide now in this release. So the maintenance work must be splited and the teams should help.
But I humbly think we can't stop saying thanks to the people who helped us. A mention in a web page would get lost, the same way the translations and some suggestions given in the old moin-moin web page were lost. In the doc itself it would last forever, because docs.fedoraproject.org remains after every change, and you may read any doc from older releases whenever you want to.
[1] the 86 comes from https://translate.fedoraproject.org/tx/languages/
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-March/msg00132.html
[3] http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Deployment_Guide...
kind regards
Domingo Becker (es)
On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 01:08:33AM -0300, Domingo Becker wrote:
The maintenance work of the list is too much work for the editors. I would prefer they spend their time to bring the deployment-guide [3] from RHEL to Fedora, the way they did with install-guide now in this release. So the maintenance work must be splited and the teams should help.
I agree, the more hands sharing the work, the easier it gets.
But I humbly think we can't stop saying thanks to the people who helped us. A mention in a web page would get lost, the same way the translations and some suggestions given in the old moin-moin web page were lost. In the doc itself it would last forever, because docs.fedoraproject.org remains after every change, and you may read any doc from older releases whenever you want to.
I agree completely. This project is all about community teamwork, and we can never forget to acknowledge and thank people who contribute their time and effort. To me, it doesn't matter how long such a document is, I just want to see it in a form where everyone can help maintain it, rather than putting all that work on a small number of people (or even one person).
Paul, Karsten, Rudi, all authors and translators
- That string has the names of the people and the year they worked
with the module as a translator. As a result, the name of the people who translated to the actual language only appears in "Help -> About -> Credits -> Translated by" of system-config-printer, for example. In Spanish, you only see the Spanish translators, not the others.
I feel the quite same way with Domingo and Tian, but not sure techically doable with Publican... Currently the contributors are displayed like this, and unfortunately I have to say it looks messy. http://rlandmann.fedorapeople.org/Installation Guide/en-US/html-single/index.html#ch-Contributors_and_production_methods
Instead, how about having the language list first and each language is linked to the translators list? So that, for example, clicking 'Spanish' will take the user to the list of Spanish translators with year by skipping all other long listed language translators lists.
If "H.1. Contributors" section can be separate xml file and write access to this file is allowed, then it can be maintained by translators without annoying the author. How you think?
noriko
By the way, not every module honours that string, but that's another subject.
I think of the list as a way to say "thanks" to the people who helped with the translations. Remember it's a free work. It's also a way to bring more people to be active translators. The install-guide, for example, is 3653 strings long. If we have 25 string in an A4 page, it would be 146 pages long. How do you ask somebody to help you translate such a big document for free? A way I used is to tell people that their names will be somewhere in the guide.
The maintenance work of the list is too much work for the editors. I would prefer they spend their time to bring the deployment-guide [3] from RHEL to Fedora, the way they did with install-guide now in this release. So the maintenance work must be splited and the teams should help.
But I humbly think we can't stop saying thanks to the people who helped us. A mention in a web page would get lost, the same way the translations and some suggestions given in the old moin-moin web page were lost. In the doc itself it would last forever, because docs.fedoraproject.org remains after every change, and you may read any doc from older releases whenever you want to.
[1] the 86 comes from https://translate.fedoraproject.org/tx/languages/
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-March/msg00132.html
[3] http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Deployment_Guide...
kind regards
Domingo Becker (es)
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2009/5/4 Noriko Mizumoto noriko@redhat.com:
Paul, Karsten, Rudi, all authors and translators
- That string has the names of the people and the year they worked
with the module as a translator. As a result, the name of the people who translated to the actual language only appears in "Help -> About -> Credits -> Translated by" of system-config-printer, for example. In Spanish, you only see the Spanish translators, not the others.
I feel the quite same way with Domingo and Tian, but not sure techically doable with Publican...
It is possible. Ruediger, would you please comment about this? And, if you need help, don't hesitate to ask.
You may read the original discussion here [1].
[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue174#Document_Colophon
kind regards
Domingo Becker (es)
Noriko Mizumoto wrote:
Instead, how about having the language list first and each language is linked to the translators list? So that, for example, clicking 'Spanish' will take the user to the list of Spanish translators with year by skipping all other long listed language translators lists.
That would certainly work (and would spare translators from having to translate the "(translator - language)" string again every time a new translator contributed to the project. On the other hand, it would make the list much longer (because of the extra headings that it would require; in the case of the Installation Guide, it would add 35 subheadings, many with only one name in them).
If "H.1. Contributors" section can be separate xml file and write access to this file is allowed,
Section H ("Contributors and production methods") is a separate XML file in the original source, but H.1 could certainly be separated from the rest of the appendix.
Even easier, if we were to use the separate subheadings approach, each language subheading could be a separate XML file. However, whether it's one XML file, or many separate XML files, translators would need to be able to commit changes directly to the repo, which I don't think they can do right now? Otherwise, they will need to send the updated XML file to someone who does have commit access; but in that case, it would be easier to just ask that person to make the change themselves.
then it can be maintained by translators without annoying the author.
This is the real crux of the matter. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, updating the list of credits for people who've volunteered their time and effort to do work on the book is not in any way "annoying" -- it's an honour.
Making sure that people get the credit that they've earned is one of the few ways that those of us maintaining these books can say "thank you" to the translators for their time and effort.
I've also seen a suggestion that the list of translators should be cut down to only show the translators who worked on one particular translation of the book. For example, the version of the book in, say, Latin would only credit the people who translated it into Latin and none of the other translators would get any credit at all in that version. I would hate to see that happen, for the same reason I've just given. Whether or not a translator has contributed to *your* particular language, that person has still made an extremely valuable contribution to the project, and should be acknowledged. That's what it means to be part of a community, right?
Just my personal opinion, of course.
Cheers Ruediger
On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 12:50:03PM +1000, Ruediger Landmann wrote:
Noriko Mizumoto wrote:
Instead, how about having the language list first and each language is linked to the translators list? So that, for example, clicking 'Spanish' will take the user to the list of Spanish translators with year by skipping all other long listed language translators lists.
That would certainly work (and would spare translators from having to translate the "(translator - language)" string again every time a new translator contributed to the project. On the other hand, it would make the list much longer (because of the extra headings that it would require; in the case of the Installation Guide, it would add 35 subheadings, many with only one name in them).
If "H.1. Contributors" section can be separate xml file and write access to this file is allowed,
Section H ("Contributors and production methods") is a separate XML file in the original source, but H.1 could certainly be separated from the rest of the appendix.
Even easier, if we were to use the separate subheadings approach, each language subheading could be a separate XML file. However, whether it's one XML file, or many separate XML files, translators would need to be able to commit changes directly to the repo, which I don't think they can do right now? Otherwise, they will need to send the updated XML file to someone who does have commit access; but in that case, it would be easier to just ask that person to make the change themselves.
then it can be maintained by translators without annoying the author.
This is the real crux of the matter. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, updating the list of credits for people who've volunteered their time and effort to do work on the book is not in any way "annoying" -- it's an honour.
Making sure that people get the credit that they've earned is one of the few ways that those of us maintaining these books can say "thank you" to the translators for their time and effort.
I've also seen a suggestion that the list of translators should be cut down to only show the translators who worked on one particular translation of the book. For example, the version of the book in, say, Latin would only credit the people who translated it into Latin and none of the other translators would get any credit at all in that version. I would hate to see that happen, for the same reason I've just given. Whether or not a translator has contributed to *your* particular language, that person has still made an extremely valuable contribution to the project, and should be acknowledged. That's what it means to be part of a community, right?
Just my personal opinion, of course.
Just to be clear here, I agree 100%. But in the same way, without tighter process on translation notices I would be more worried that a maintainer would *inadvertently* leave someone out, which creates a bad situation without anyone meaning harm. Maintainers are free to help with the maintenance of a colophon but we should always seek to make the load spreadable. That's what it means to be scalable! ;-)
Paul W. Frields wrote:
Just to be clear here, I agree 100%. But in the same way, without tighter process on translation notices I would be more worried that a maintainer would *inadvertently* leave someone out, which creates a bad situation without anyone meaning harm.
Absolutely! So what's required here is that before creating a new version of a book, the maintainer must review the git log for new translations committed since the last version was published and credit any new translators. The same would apply whenever we refresh POT files. Translators can help out by sending an email to the maintainer or to docs-list if they notice that we've missed anyone (exactly like Domingo did recently). In this particular case, I was already aware of the new Spanish translators who were to be added (along with new translators in other languages and some changes in the book text itself) to the next refresh of the POT files. It certainly didn't hurt to be reminded though.
By the very nature of our docs/l10n process, it's unavoidable that new translators who assisted with *this* version (or build) of a document won't receive credit in the text until the *next* version (or build).
Maintainers are free to help with the maintenance of a colophon but we should always seek to make the load spreadable. That's what it means to be scalable! ;-)
To achieve full scalability on this, translators would need to have the ability to commit changes to the English XML files that make up the document; whether the Contributors section was a single XML file or a separate XML file per language. Failing that, they're still relying on a docs maintainer as the "middle man".
Perhaps Transifex's file filter can be set so that it allows translators access to the Contributors XML file(s) in the master branch of the document (as well as the PO files)?
Cheers Ruediger
-
Domingo Becker -
Noriko Mizumoto -
Paul W. Frields -
Ruediger Landmann -
Tian Shixiong