← Back to team overview

ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

Re: Not happy at all

 

Op 22-12-10 13:01, Ask Hjorth Larsen schreef:
Hi

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM, lafeber-dumoleyn2
<lafeber-dumoleyn2@xxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
After having finished the Lucid-e1 Dutch translation I took a look at
Lucid-e2 on Launchpad. I discovered that 25% (415 strings) was
untranslated, but when I checked the first "untranslated" string I
noticed that there was only a minor change. Most of it was like in
Lucid-e1, but someone had translated the whole string all over again. I
am afraid this is the case with most of the "untranslated" strings. When
there is a minor change, LP will not copy the translation of the string
from Lucid-e1, which means that people start translating the whole
string all over again.
It is sad that a lot of effort and hard work is spent on something that
has been done already.
I see no quick solution to this problem, but perhaps it is better NOT to
make minor changes, unless it is really necessary.
I will give one example of a (pretty long) string that has been
translated twice:

Lucid-e2
With more people working on the project than ever before, Ubuntu
continues to see improvement to its core features and hardware support,
and has gained the attention of large organizations worldwide. For
example, in 2007, \Index{Dell} began a collaboration with
\Index{Canonical} to sell computers with Ubuntu preinstalled.
Additionally, in 2005, the French Police began to transition their
entire computer infrastructure to a variant of Ubuntu\dash a process
which has reportedly saved them ``millions of euros'' in licensing fees
for Microsoft Windows. By the year 2012, the French Police anticipates
that all of their computers will be running Ubuntu. \Index{Canonical}
profits from this arrangement by providing technical support and
custom-built software.

Lucid-e1
Now with more people working on the project than ever before, Ubuntu
continues to see improvement to its core features and hardware support,
and has gained the attention of large organizations worldwide. For
example, in 2007 Dell began a collaboration with Canonical to sell
computers with Ubuntu pre-installed. Additionally, in 2005 the French
Police began to transition their entire computer infrastructure to a
variant of Ubuntu\dash a process which has reportedly saved them
``millions of Euro'' in licensing fees for Microsoft Windows. By the
year 2012, the French Police anticipates that all of their computers
will be running Ubuntu. Canonical profits from this arrangement by
providing technical support and custom-built software.

Nu, met meer mensen dan ooit die aan het project meewerken, worden er in
Ubuntu nog steeds verbeteringen aangebracht, zowel aan de kernfuncties
als aan de hardware-ondersteuning, en krijgt het wereldwijd aandacht
van grote organisaties. Zo ging Dell in 2007 samenwerken met Canonical
om computers te verkopen waarop Ubuntu reeds geïnstalleerd is. Bovendien
begon de Franse politie in 2005 met de overstap naar een variant van
Ubuntu – dit zou hen “miljoenen euro’s ” hebben bespaard aan
licentierechten voor Microsoft Windows. Tegen 2012 verwacht de Franse
politie dat al hun computers op Ubuntu zullen draaien. Canonical
profiteert hiervan door
technische ondersteuning en software-op-maat aan te bieden.

If this kind of translation is not transferred from e1 to e2 I see no
quick way of reviewing 415 strings that have been retranslated in the
form of suggestions.
Hannie
Ubuntu Dutch Translators




--
ubuntu-translators mailing list
ubuntu-translators@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators

It's unfortunate that the `fuzzy' feature of gettext is not supported
in LP, and there have been previous discussions in the manual team
about what to do, but there's no really good solution as it is.

The best solution for the time being is to export the po-files of both
manual versions from Launchpad and use msgmerge to merge the
translations from the old one into the new template.  This will
produce `fuzzy' strings in the new template, which can then be
reviewed (although offline).  You may find a po-editor useful, as well
as podiff + wdiff.

It's a social problem that one will have to specifically prevent
contributors from wasting their time by contributing to the wrong
version in Launchpad.  Try to communicate over a mailing list and
agree who does what in which version.  That's all the advice I can
give.

Best regards
Ask

Hi Ask,
Thank you very much for your reaction.
I think one of the major problems here is that in Lucid-e2 some/many(?) strings have changed only slightly (like in my previous example), causing LP to see them as totally new. So LP does not transfer the translation from version e1 to e2. What happens next is that people who open version e2 in LP find a lot of "untranslated" strings (415 in this case) and start translating them, not realising that some/many of them have been translated in e1 already (except for the minor changes, of course). For me as a reviewer it becomes even worse, because now I see a suggestion in e2 that differs from e1 (not only the changes, but also different use of words, different construction etc.). I have to open e1, find the same string there using a keyword (stringnumbers are different in e1 and e2), copy and paste the whole string to e2 and finally make the minor changes. This is unworkable and time-consuming. So the best solution would be not to make minor changes, unless it is absolutely necessary. There is no problem with completely new strings because these have not been translated yet.
Regards,
Hannie





Follow ups

References