Arne Goetje wrote:
Once the sync/merge is done, the new translations will be imported into Rosetta and supersede older entries in case the same string has been translated into the same language before.
The one problem there is that those imports do not supersede older entries. This is because there are two valid reasons why Ubuntu package translations may diverge from the upstream ones:
#1 Something may need to be translated differently in Ubuntu, e.g. because of differences in translation standards. This is where Ubuntu translations really "fork," and these changes we'll generally want to keep when upstream translations are updated.
#2 Upstream translations may be incomplete, or occasionally, have real mistakes. Launchpad makes it possible to fix those locally first. Of course we hope that these translations will also go upstream, but beyond the "Download translations" option and the view filters for Ubuntu changes, there is no central mechanism to do that.
Ideally, translation reviewers will keep the upstream translations wherever possible and keep the divergence to a minimum. We're working on better documentation and we have plans for facilities that make it easier to take just the changes upstream for review and reuse. The big limitation is engineering time!
(For projects that do use Launchpad, it's easier: "#1" translations should all go to the Ubuntu package and ideally, "#2" translations would all go straight to the upstream project. It won't be that ideal in practice, but the suggestions system helps make up the difference).
Jeroen
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(Formatted by MHonArc.)