[Fedora-trans-list] Re: new mailing lists for translators

[Martin Mewes]

Hi Sarah,

Sarah Wang <sarahs at redhat.com> wrote:

>> The question is. How can we help you out of this situation?
>> Is there anything in order what we (or at least I) could do?
>> 
>
>Good call! I'd like to know what information people would like to see on 
>this website first, and also welcome suggestions of content 
>layout/organizations.

The following is just a discussion start ...

######################################################################

a) What's this?

	Description of the Fedora-Trans-Project.

i.e.	The Fedora-Trans-Project has started at ... in order to
	translate famous Linux Software and its documentation
	into main languages. This would be for now french, german,
	spanish, portuguese and <some flavours of chinese, japanese>.
	If a software is written by source in russian maybe, well
	we try to get this into english as well :-)

	Our goal is to offer a "complete" distribution and that
	the entire distribution consists of HOWTOs and MANPAGEs in
	the languages listed above. In that way Fedora shall be a
	distribution for beginners as well, as for experts.

	Various distributions just offer Linux-Software as is and
	exspecially leave beginners alone, but if Linux wants to
	konquer the desktop it has to speak the native language not
	only partly in the GUI but on the console as well.

	The Fedora-Trans-Project is trying to get this job done.

b) Who we are?

	No names here, but only volunteers who want to
	be contact persons for foreigners.

i.e.	We are mainly not programmers, but interested enthusiasts.
	Everyone just works on a part of this project. More info can
	be found in "Organization".

	If you really want to speak to a single human before taking a
	job here you may send out an eMail to the following
	volunteers:

	Maintainer of the Project in common:

	Paul Gampe - <pgampe at redhat.com>, Maintainer
	Sarah Wang - <sarahs at redhat.com>, Maintainer

	Maintainers of Localisation:

	German - vsuihdfuiidfuidgf efwdffhurf 
	French - ifuofreui frfrfrf
	Japanese - ruieuiruier weruirer

	
c) How to join?

i.e.	Very easy just visit:

	https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-trans-list

	and subscribe to the main list.

	Or visit

	one of these listed pages to go directly to your language.

	German: fedora-trans-de.

	French: fedora-trans-fr.
	
	Spanish: fedora-trans-es.
	
	Italian: fedora-trans-it.
	
	Brazilian Portuguese: fedora-trans-pt_br.
	
	Japanese: fedora-trans-ja.
	
	Korean: fedora-trans-ko.
	
	Simplified Chinese: fedora-trans-zh_cn.
	
	Traditional Chinese: fedora-trans-zh_tw.


d) Organization

i.e.	Every language has one maintainer responsible for
	his/her language. Normally those folks are voted
	for one year by the community, but as an initial start
	we (Sarah and Peter) decided who will take the job.

	The job of this person can be taken as an "Editor in Chief"
	for his language who is responsible to cvscheckin translations
	coming from contributors.

	He/She is the final frontier before translations are going
	into the main distribution.

######################################################################

>The main part of software translation process is already automated. The 
>pot files are generated by gettext tools and put into cvs for checkout; 
>the po files are automatically updated whenever pot file is updated; 
>everyone who has a cvs account will be able to commit the translation 
>(althought this procedure needs to be fine tuned); the finished 
>translation files will be automatically integrated into the software 
>packages.

I think you need to find a way that a responsible human checks the
automated translations as the final frontier. Nothing should be just
being done by a machine.
As for my Webmin-work I do have some automation but the main work must
be edited because there are so many things cannot be automated if you
want to have a usuable localisation.

>I believe our challenge is to find the most efficient procedure to 
>coordinate the translation as well as maintain the consistency and 
>reusability of the existing translation.

Yes :-)
That's why I invented a main human upstream before anything is going
into the main source tree which is used to build the distribution.
Q&A is absolutely necessary.

>FAQ is necessary in the beginning. Anyone would like to volunteer to get 
>the FAQ together. Maybe we can put that on the project website, so this 
>mailing list can be used for other discussions.

Well I volunteered to write something together as a first starting
point in this eMail. Now let's check the feedback on this.

>> To get more folks in here it needs to be more publizised (correct 
>> spelling?). And to get more as well, the Main-WebPage needs to be 
>> available in different languages as well as a start point.
>> I am ready to help thing put to german if needed.
>
>Totally agree with you there. I'm working with Paul Gampe to get the 
>website content into cvs, so everyone will be able to check out and 
>translate the module therefore having localized project interface. I 
>welcome any suggestions.

I do not know that much of cvs but I am willing to learn to use it in
order to improve myself :-)
If you teach me, I'll get that page into german and mybe I can "hire"
some Webmin-translators to get the page to french and maybe into an
arabian flavour ;-)

[What is po?]
>> 
>>>"po" file is normally generated by GNU gettext tool. It contains
>>>original msg and translated msg pairs. It's used very commonly for
>>>software interfaces. You will noticed that all software
>>>translations are in po file format.
>>>
>>>The advantage of po format is its maintainability. It can be easily
>>>updated and merged using the existing gettext tools.
>> 
>> 
>> So how about a FAQ on HOWTO work with po ( at least for folks like me) 
>> as a start :-)
>
>That is certainly a good starting point :)
>Any volunteers?

For native germans I found an excellent HOWTO with pictures here:

http://www.fask.uni-mainz.de/cafl/doku/Linux/LinuxTranslation.html

It is based on KDE2 but I think it is somehow usuable.

bis dahin - kind regards

Martin Mewes

-- 
http://webmin.mamemu.de/
Official Webmin/Usermin Translation Co-Ordinator 2003/2004
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