Talk:L10N/issues and requirements

Can the resolution time-line (expected/desired) for the "Pressing Issues" be recorded ?

"o Registration for participation as a Fedora translator is a long and tedious 9-step process with lots of technical challenges"

- is this still the case after migrating to the new FAS ? Can the steps be listed out so as to enable to a discussion ?

"* Change Tracking, QA Process - being able to see who translated what"

- does this require the involvement of the QA team ?

Registration Process
I added a link to the current registration process, as well as a reference to an earlier thread suggesting an easier process.

-- How much of the existing process which you described as long and tedious is based on the FAS workflow ? --Sankarshan 07:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

-- Please add a/the page to the FedoraProject wiki. The current page redirects to an external GOOG group/page. --Sankarshan 06:58, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Translation word list tool
About "We loose many translators who have good domain knowledge and linguistic skills, but little development-centric experience" --Magnusg 09:20, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Can we perhaps help with a tool that makes creating your own technical translation word list simple?
 * My thought is that you may insert new words (translations) via some interface, and it's accessable via the specific languages team pages?
 * Also there might be some kind of vote function, so that correct translations may be voted for by language team members.

First and Quickest to Bring About
I have recently joined the FLP and must say that, imho, the 9 steps mentioned above are not really the problem. The most confusing stage to me only came after those steps, and was to me most discouraging: the "What Now?"-moment. If the language-coörd and the others are (in my case:temporally) not availble, it is very hard to figure out how the expected methodology of getting the file, translate it and put it back really goes (all obsolete info on that), especially because in the beginning i was not even sure what the file to get was! > is this a right file? am i frustrating others atm? what is a freez-period? How about different versions of the program in the samen distro (newer/updated...is my file compatible, what do people expect from me?) how do i get an overview, what are the lottery numbers of next week??

So why don't you just ask on the diff mailing-lists you will say...Well, dont know bout the others, but you don't stumble in like that on your first day....so you learn by reading the mail on those lists, by trying and occasionally doing the right things. But it is not the way it should be done, is it. Maybe the best thing and quickest improvement atm is to update and add more info to the data in that area, asap. If i can help with that, gladly. As a relative newcomer i see the tremendous effort already made by all people here and i certainly don't want to take it down, but here you are.
 * nippur 15:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Comments by Dimitris Glezos
This is a useful list of "we'd like to see these solved" features, thank you for compiling it.

Unfortunately most of these issues were not reported on the fedora-trans-list mailing list and do not have reporter's name next to them. Encouraging people to file issues eponymously on-list or with bug reports ensures that issues will be answered quickly. If these issues were raised by internal translators, please do send an email to the internal list letting folks know about the standard channels to report issues.

To make the best out of this list, we need to turn it into a TODO list with each TODO having an owner attached to it and a target date to have it fixed. This TODO list should have detailed bug reports opened on the respective tools's Bugzilla/Trac (for Transifex this is on transifex.org).

Some of the points need metrics and more clarity (less ambiguity) to show how important it is and what fix is needed (eg. "Translators have to know too much technical skills").

Some notes:


 * 1) translations-updates for Fedora packages:
 * 2) Transifex & DL already support translations submitted for updates on current releases. Examples for such modules are system-config-printer, transifex itself, GNOME etc.
 * 3) This is currently done by the usual process of VCS branching. See below for tarball-only updates.
 * 4) Tracking translation in multiple branches: Both Transifex & Damned Lies already support this.
 * 5) Patches against tarballs:
 * 6) Transifex was designed to allow easy extensions to track files such as a public tarball instead of a pure VCS.
 * 7) The actual submission in this case can happen by email (another good extension of Transifex, already on its roadmap) or a bug report (already on roadmap).
 * 8) Damned Lies inefficiencies:
 * 9) We run an older version of DL. The newer version has been re-written with the goal of being merged with Transifex in the future. The Fedora Infrastructure group has asked for an owner for this action, who they can support in setting things up. (needs an owner/resource allocation)
 * 10) Transifex's newer version (v0.5) has statistics support enabled inside the application itself. With this, DL is not needed at all. 0.5 is expected to ship in March 2008.
 * 11) Publican:
 * 12) Adding support for Publican in Transifex is a few hours of developer work.
 * 13) There are a number of people who could do this, both in Publican's team as well in Transifex's. It is already on the latter teams' roadmap in the next months. Patches are welcome.
 * 14) Multi-file upload:
 * 15) Transifex's backend supports multiple file uploads.
 * 16) Extending the front-end interface to support such an operation is a few hours of work.
 * 17) Translation-in-progress flag: Again, a few hours of work. Already on Transifex's roadmap.
 * 18) "Translator Aids":
 * 19) Most of the features mentioned are already on Transifex's roadmap for the next months.
 * 20) Terminology management is not on the roadmap and probably won't be for maybe a year. There are probably some good and established open-source libraries out there.
 * 21) Change tracking: On roadmap.
 * 22) Notifications & RSS feeds: Already implemented and available in upcoming v0.5.
 * 23) Web-based tool: On our roadmap for the next months (max May '09).
 * 24) "Pushing language-packs": A topic to be discussed with RelEng, outside of any L10n tool's scope (including Transifex).

--Glezos 20:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Install only needed language packs
In F11, a typical install will leave a system with >20 firefox language packs and support for all kinds of languages which one doesn't need.

Need to find a way to install only what's needed, and easily add more later if needed (e.g. select language during Anaconda setup)

--mariusa