FAD Report

Wed Sep 21 14:14:57 UTC 2011

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On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 04:29:00PM +0200, Petr Kovar wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:12:31 -0400
> Zach Oglesby <oglesbyzm at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We are going to start talks with the L10N team about them owning there own translations. This means that they have control of when and what is pushed to the web, and takes the guess work out for the docs team.
> 
> I see several problems with this. 
> 
> First off, I think that usually only the guide owners know what is the best
> time to publish the document. 

Actually we (I) don't.  I know when I'm done for a release and that's generally when the POT files are available.  At that point I'm done.  What I don't know is when the translators are ready to publish.  Again, we've had teams that actually removed translations from Transifex because they didn't want any of their translations published until they were 100% complete.  Other teams want *any* work they've completed to be published, even if it is a low as 5%.  Everyone else seems to agree on the *arbitrary* 90% number which has no significance at all.  What ends up happening is translations don't get pushed.

> 
> Second, the guide owners are supposed to have the best understanding of how
> to update translations / POT files against the current content they have
> written, and what is the correct process of publishing them. When it comes
> to localization, be in the Fedora project or in any other community project,
> translators already have to deal with many other complex tasks and
> honestly, I'm not entirely sure that the majority of them would be able to
> get their new updating and publishing tasks done with Transifex and
> Publican, since both tools are quite developer-oriented and certainly not
> extremely friendly for less technical people.

Publican has gotten a lot easier to use over the past few releases.  Everything is documented on the wiki so everyone should be able to do it.  Docs people don't have any special know-how just because we write.

> 
> And last, but not least, in fact the Fedora translators are already
> permitted to own their own translations, in that they can obtain the
> access rights and some of them have already done so. Though I'd be a little
> bit afraid of it becoming a rule for every translation team and every
> translator out there.

The problem is that it will become difficult to keep track of who is and who isn't publishing.  It is just simpler for the translators to own their process and be responsible for their work so they can publish when they are ready.

> 
> Just thought it might be worth sharing some of my concerns here. Surely it
> is best to ask the Fedora translators directly and see what they think.

We've brought it up with them before but I'm not sure that there has been a lot of discussion.

> 
> Best,
> Petr Kovar

- --Eric

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