[fab] A real communication problem

[Karsten Wade]

On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 16:22 -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Paul W. Frields (stickster at gmail.com) said: 
> > 2.  Translation/Infrastructure in Red Hat was supposed to provide a
> > gateway or integration with the translation system (i18n.redhat.com) for
> > docs stuff.  This would ease the burden on our community translators to
> > learn different systems, which is a real PITA for those who are already
> > giving so much of their time.  Again, no word.
> 
> Meanwhile, in distro land, we've been trying to get i18n.redhat.com
> retired. Not good to be working at cross-purposes.

This is all about retiring elvis/i18n, for certain.

The code on i18n that allows for translators to lock and track the
status of translations requires the CVS to be sitting on the same
machine as the code.

http://i18n.redhat.com/cgi-bin/i18n-status

Until that lives on cvs.fedoraproject.org, we have been running a
parallel translation effort in FDP.  There are a handful of dedicated
translators across a growing list of languages, but it does not benefit
from the scalability and processes of the Fedora Translation Project.

Regardless, it needs to be loved or rewritten as it is moved.  So, this
all goes hand-in-hand with moving trans CVS, their Web tools, and
thousands of accounts to cvs.fedoraproject.org.

Elliot picked this migration up again a few weeks ago for Fedora
Infrastructure, and we've been knocking it around in private email with
Paul Gampe and members of his group, who are supposed to have some
internal ownership of the components.  I'm still not sure why we are i)
not doing anything in the open with this, ii) not doing anything with it
except talking occasionally.  Because the project has been batted back
and forth for the last year and hasn't been brought out to be scheduled
on the Wiki, discussed on list, etc., no one is really aware of the
status.  Since I can only peddle influence and good humor to get things
like this done ;-D, I've been rather unsuccessful since ... last July,
I'd reckon.

In the meantime, we have two very vital pieces of documentation that
should be translated into all the languages we translate the rest of the
distro into:

* Release notes
* about-fedora.xml == System (menu) > About Fedora

I _think_ "About GNOME"/"About KDE" are translated upstream, right?

Since i18n is not going to be moved in time for test2 (or probably
test3), we need to get those files loaded into CVS on i18n.r.c and made
available through the translation interface.  Then it needs WIDE
publicity amongst translators that:

1. The files are here to be translated
2. The strings will change, maybe drastically, between test2 and FC 6
final
3. The existing upstream release notes translators (those working
directly with us in FDP) are the language owners for those modules
4. This is documentation translation, versus software strings, so a
specific set of skills may be needed.

Since we have a working toolchain that produces and pulls back in well
vetted PO/POT files, the effort involved for this work around is very
minimal.  30 minutes on IRC with one or two of us from FDP?  A pittance
for such a huge benefit.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
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