ubuntu-translations-coordinators team mailing list archive

[David Planella <david.planella@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dustin,

El dj 15 de 10 de 2009 a les 16:59 -0500, en/na Dustin Kirkland va
escriure:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Adi Roiban <adi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I think that the i18n support is still in work and only available in the
> > trunk and was not releases.
> >
> > Here is a hint  :)
> > http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ecryptfs/ecryptfs/ecryptfs-utils/revision/438#debian/changelog
> >
> > I have added Dustin at the CC and I hope he can tell us more about the
> > ecryptfs-utils.pot file from the ecryptfs project in LP.
> 
> Sadly, I'm still mostly ignorant about translations integration.
> 
> I've tried multiple times to get translations/internationalization
> into my daily upstream workflow for both eCryptfs and Byobu, and in
> both cases I get frustrated.
> 
> I did my best to gettext the strings in all of the strings in the
> shell code and scripts.  I think this now generating the strings to a
> pot file.  I fought with Launchpad translations to get this loaded.  I
> still haven't figured out how and if the foreign text strings are
> getting inserted into the package when I build it.  I think Byobu is
> mostly working.  It doesn't look like eCryptfs is working at all.
> 

I wouldn't bother too much with adding translations for the shell
scripts for now, since if I'm not mistaken, the most visible parts are
the update notification and the .desktop files. Therefore, I'd focus on
getting those translatable first.

> Ideally, someone would come along with a patch that adds i18n support
> into my projects, and I'll merge into the upstream code, and abide by
> that process from then on.  I really want to focus on what I'm good,
> the functionality and debugging, and enlist the help of a translations
> expert to get my projects to the point where they're ready to be
> translated.
> 

I've made an attempt to that. I've now created a branch that adds
preliminary i18n support for the update notification and the .desktop
files and linked it to the bug report, but might need some additional
help where my packaging-fu does not reach.

Here's what's working:

* Extraction of strings from the update notification and .desktop files
and merging them into the POT template using intltool

* Generating the POT template during the package build. This means that
when uploading the package the template should get picked up
automatically and imported into Launchpad. It will also mean that the
translations (.mo files) will be correctly exported in language packs.

Here's where I might need some help:

* Postinstall script: looking at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InteractiveUpgradeHooks, it mentions that the
underscores needed to mark the update notification as translatable need
to be removed in the postinstall script, and it shows an example of how
to do this with sed. However, I could not find out how the notification
is installed, so I wasn't sure at which point the underscores should be
removed. I'm guessing figuring this out should not be difficult for
someone with more packaging experience.

* Variable substitution in .desktop.in files: .desktop files are
correctly generated on build. I also added the 'X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain'
key to them, which should be assigned the package's translation domain.
Rather than hardcoding the domain, I've tried to use the
@GETTEXT_PACKAGE@ variable to be substituted on build. This, however,
did not seem to work, as @GETTEXT_PACKAGE@ does not get substituted on
build in the resulting .desktop files.

> As an aside, I'll mention another barrier to translations, from my
> perspective...
>  * https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/436828
> I'm particularly annoyed when I get bugs filed against my packages and
> the logs and error messages, etc, are in a foreign language.  It makes
> it very difficult for me to triage and solve the problem.  I totally
> understand that errors should be reported to the user in their native
> tongue.  But when the logs get sent back to me, as a developer, I
> really need them in English if I am to solve the problem.
> 

Well, that's not really related to translations... :) In any case, what
you can do in these cases is to file a ticket in Answers requesting for
translation help, or simply email the ubuntu-translators list.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
David.

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

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