launchpad-translators team mailing list archive

[David Planella <david.planella@xxxxxxxxxx>]

El Mo 22 de 03 de 2010 a les 15:35 -0300, en/na salsaman va escriure:
> Hi David,
> thanks for your response to my message.
> 
> 2010/3/22 David Planella <david.planella@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> > El Sa 20 de 03 de 2010 a les 13:48 +0000, en/na salsaman va escriure:
> >> Hello,
> >> this is my first message to this mailing list. I am the main
> >> developer/maintainer of the LiVES Project (http://lives.sourceforge.net)
> >>
> >> First of all I would like to thank the launchpad team for providing such
> >> a great service. Thanks to launchpad, translation is underway in over 25
> >> languages with new ones being added regularly. Secondly, thanks to all
> >> of the many translators who have contributed to LiVES translations.
> >>
> >
> > Awesome.
> >
> >> However, not all is good news. I was recently checking out one of the
> >> translations (Brazilian Portuguese) and I noted a problem with the user
> >> interface. Now LiVES is a very complex tool and it has to show a lot of
> >> information/options on the screen. I have spent a lot of time (many
> >> hours) making sure that everything fits nicely. The problem I noted was
> >> with menubar entries. In the translation, these are somewhat longer than
> >> in the original, which means that the menubar is actually wider than the
> >> screen, which cause problems in th GUI. I have done what I can to fix
> >> this, but there is a limit to what I can do.
> >>
> >
> > There is something else you can do as well: you can use translator
> > comments. These comments get extracted by xgettext when you are building
> > the POT template and then they are put there. Launchpad supports these
> > comments and shows them to translators.
> >
> > For you as a developer, it is as simple as adding a C comment on the
> > line above the string (either good-old /**/ comments or C99, C++-like //
> > comments). E.g.
> >
> > /* TRANSLATORS: try not to use more than approx. 12 characters */
> > printf(_("Short string"));
> >
> > You'll see if this works if after creating your POT template the
> > "TRANSLATORS: ..." string appears in it. Note that the use of all-caps
> > TRANSLATORS is only a convention, it is not required for the comment to
> > be extracted.
> >
> 
> I'm sorry, could you explain a bit more about translator comments ?
> Are you saying that the comment has to start with the word
> Translators: ?
> 
> I have tried adding comments, e.g.:
> 
> http://lives.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lives/trunk/src/main.c
> 
> if you look at lines 703 - 707 for example, but these comments do not
> appear in Launchpad.
> 

Ah, that's just because they need to be on the line below the
translatable string you want to comment on. I.e.:

This will not work:

  mainw->any_string=g_strdup(_("Any"));  // note to translators - text saying "Any", for encoder and output format

This will work:

  // note to translators - text saying "Any", for encoder and output format
  mainw->any_string=g_strdup(_("Any"));

I haven't looked at your build system, but you can check if this works
by using the make rule or script you are using to create the POT
template.

Once you've done that, you should see something like that for that
particular string in your POT file:

#. note to translators - text saying "Any", for encoder and output format
#: src/main.c:703
msgid "Any"
msgstr ""

The comment above the "#: src/main.c:703" line is the one that got
extracted, and Launchpad will be able to use it and show it to
translators. It will look similar to the text you see next to the {i}
icon here:

https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/gdebi/+pots/gdebi/ca/78/+translate

> 
> 
> 
> 
> >> The solution is to keep menubar entries as short as possible. For
> >> example, the English "To_ys" is translated in pt_BR as "Brinquedos
> >> [_Y]". First of all, it is not that important to keep menu accelerators
> >> the same, so the translation "_Brinquedos" would suffice.
> >>
> >
> > I've seen this happening in some translations, and the way this can be
> > solved is to train translators through translation teams and use a
> > slightly more tightened translations policy if you care for quality.
> >
> > I've noticed that LiVES is translated with Open permissions. This is ok
> > if that is your decision, but perhaps you could consider using another
> > permission policy that puts the balance more on the quality rather than
> > on the quantity of translations.
> >
> > The Launchpad help page summarizes the permission policies very well:
> >
> >  https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/YourProject/PermissionPolicies
> >
> > I'd personally recommend using a Restricted or Structured policy,
> > assigned to the Launchpad Translators group [1] [2]
> >
> > With this type of permission, everyone with a Launchpad account will be
> > able to submit translations, which will then have to be reviewed by a
> > group of trusted translators before being included in the program.
> >
> > Using the code analogy, a Restricted policy is like with a distributed
> > revision control system and branches, where everyone can create their
> > own branches and merge proposals (translation suggestions), but these
> > merge proposals must be reviewed by experienced developers before being
> > merged to the codebase.
> >
> > Having Open permissions for translation is like having an open
> > repository where everyone can commit. While this is great for having
> > lots of translations in little time, in my experience the quality of
> > these translations greatly suffers.
> >
> 
> OK, thanks for the tip - I will review the policies as you suggest.
> Maybe it would be good to leave it open for a while longer and then
> ask for reviews of all the translations (is that possible ?).
> 

Sure, the previous was my recommendation, but ultimately you, as the
developer, will make the decision on what the better approach for your
project is. You can change the permissions at any time.

You might want to consider choosing Structured for now, since this is
effectively a mixture between the two: Open for languages without a
team, Restricted for those with a team.

> 
> 
> >> Secondly, I would like to ask that translators actually test the
> >> application they are translating. If that had been done in this case,
> >> surely somebody would have noted the menubar problems and for example,
> >> shortened "_Brinquedos" to "_Brinq.s" or something similar.
> >>
> >> OK, I am not complaining:- this is just general advice for translators
> >> of this particular project.
> >
> > Thanks a lot for the advice, I'm sure translators appreciate it.
> >
> >>  A question then for the launchpad team - I
> >> would like to post the above information on the project translation
> >> page, e.g. as "General advice for translating this project". My
> >> suggestion is that you allow developers/project maintainers to add
> >> advice specific to their project.
> >>
> >
> > That's actually a good point, and it has been discussed in the past. As
> > an alternative, this might fulfill part of the requirement:
> >
> > You can also add a comment to the template itself in Launchpad:
> > https://translations.launchpad.net/lives/trunk/+pots/lives/+edit by
> > editing the description. This description will then be shown in
> > https://translations.launchpad.net/lives/trunk/+pots/lives
> >
> > I hope you can find this info useful.
> >
> 
> What I have done for now is to make sure the very first message which
> comes up is actually addressed to translators. It points them the URL
> of a readme:
> 
> http://lives.sourceforge.net/TRANS-README.txt
> 
> which as you can see has a simple test plan to make sure the GUI works
> as intended.
> 
> Having said that, I had to fiddle with the code to get this to come up
> as the first string. it would still be nice to have a link on the
> project page that would show that same information. I can't imagine it
> would be that much work for Launchpad to implement it.
> 

Actually, if you'd be interested in implementing this (or any other!)
feature in Launchpad Translations, the developers will be more than
happy to mentor you if necessary.

Remember that Launchpad is Open Source code, and here's how to get
started:

  https://dev.launchpad.net/Getting

> 
> > By the way, translators, here's where you can start translating the
> > project:
> >
> >  https://translations.launchpad.net/lives/trunk
> >
> > Happy translating!
> >
> > Regards,
> > David.
> >
> 
> Thanks for the plug :-) I had to release a new version yesterday due
> to the discovery of a bug in the prior release - so thanks to anyone
> who responded before that, and keep up the good work for the next
> release !
> 

No worries, keep up the goog work in developing LiVES!

Just let me know if I can be of any help.

Regards,
David.

-- 
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
david(dot)planella(at)ubuntu(dot)com
www.ubuntu.com

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