Re: Fedora and Translation Teams

[Sherif Abdelgwad <sabdelg at redhat dot com>]

First, I am just a stating *my own* openion here and it is 
not *fedora* openion or redhat.

I am getting confused and lost in the long emails. Can Mohamed or
Youcef please explain in short email, in points : what are the
problems as I failed to follow all long emails here. I do not
see any changes in the policys, the only thing happened was
to prevent multiple translators committing changes at same time.

I went through Mohamed email and I am not sure where all these
issues came from? 

I belive that by people establish teams here, things will be
start to shape and take better form. Let me ask first, 
when Arabeyes started translation, did they have full list
of things how it should be? Things are still being built and
taking final shape. I belive in the freedom of allowing 
people to contribute. 

The main goal I see here is to provide traslation. Is the 
translation provided by certain people will be final and
for good? I doubt! To establish a translation first is the
first step. I belive yet to come a lot of tuning and enhancement.

I am not aginst keeping things the same across all modules, 
and similar to other translations. For sure will be great
to have team like Arabeyes team to contribute. Yet, why
assuming anyone else who would like to contribute would
cause a mess because s/he decided not to be part of Arabeyes. 

So, to keep this discussion constructive, can we discuss
here what are the requirment or the right way someone think
the system should be ? I had hard time to get clear requirment
or request. I only found hey this policy is no good, why
this should be this way. It would be better to be hey
why do not we have things this way. 

Thanks

Sherif


On Fri, 2004-06-25 at 09:06, Bernd Groh wrote:

> Wow! I am completely and utterly confused now. For the record, the main 
> change that has been undertaken is the [Take], [Release] mechanism, that 
> is to prevent two translators from comitting at the same time. Can 
> anyone tell me what exactly happened here? *confused* We did not 
> introduce any new policy, we merely, as said, implemented a mechanism to 
> prevent two translators from comitting at the same time. And one thing I 
> should mention, since I am not clear whether it is clear or not, though 
> it should be, what I am saying here on list is *not* Fedora policy, it 
> is *my* opinion. I believe in my opinion and in my right to state it, 
> that I've implemented this new system for the Fedora project has 
> absolutely nothing to do with it.
> 
> Regards,
> Bernd
> 
> 
> Mohammed Elzubeir schrieb:
> 
> >Salam,
> >
> >This is intended to all translators involved in Fedora, whether they are
> >involved for Arabic or any other language. It is also intended for the
> >people who shape the policies and tools used by and for the translators.
> >
> >To all Arabeyes members who are involved in translations, I would
> >strongly advise you to join the fedora translation list [1] to voice
> >your opinions, in order to allow the Fedora maintainers to better
> >understand our requirements.
> >
> >Introduction
> >------------
> >
> >Fedora recently announced [2] a new system which nullifies pre-existing 
> >language translation teams. This is not to say that they had such an explicit
> >policy, in the past but they are now saying that it is definitely not the
> >policy. What do they want to do then? They want to have translator per module.
> >What does this mean? Simple. There is module A that translator X can take, 
> >translate, release. Translator Y comes along, takes A, translates, releases. 
> >The same goes for modules B, C, etc.
> >
> >Sounds good, eh? More people can easily contribute. What this will result in 
> >is complete and utter chaos. Allow me to elaborate.
> >
> >The Loss of Consistency
> >-----------------------
> >
> >There will be absolutely no conherence among translations. Each translator, 
> >depending on their language skills will have their own interpretation of 
> >strings. They will also have their own vocabulary that will most certainly 
> >conflict with someone else's in the overall translation.
> >
> >The Loss of Quality Control
> >---------------------------
> >
> >Since there is no group overseeing the quality of the translation, there are 
> >no assurances that the quality of translation is up to any standard. So who
> >says what is standard? In the case of Arabic, the Arabeyes Project [3] has 
> >set up a committee (Quality Assurance Comittee [4]) that is specifically 
> >tasked with overseeing such standardizations across all translation projects. 
> >This is something that other projects can learn from. However, with such a 
> >scheme standards published by the QAC have no means of being implemented.
> >
> >The Loss of Communication
> >-------------------------
> >
> >Since there is no group, each individual translator is on their own island 
> >with their own ideas of how things should be done. This does not affect
> >Fedora alone. This affects how Arabic is translated across a variety of
> >localized applications and libraries.
> >
> >This additionally creates a very serious problem for a large project, like
> >Arabeyes. For example, in order to perform CVS sync's, the maintainer now
> >has to manually see what module he still has control over and what
> >modules he does not. In other words, a 5 minutes job will now take 50
> >minutes. 
> >
> >The Loss of a Community
> >-----------------------
> >
> >This scheme completely obliterates the sense and spirit of a community.
> >In the case of Arabic, this took very hard long years to build and foster.
> >With such a scheme, this community no longer needs to exist and is simply
> >put back to an individual doing a couple strings and going home forgetting
> >about the work he/she has modified.
> >
> >The Loss of Credit
> >------------------
> >
> >Arabeyes has taken great pains to ensuring that credit is given to each
> >and every individual who has contributed in any way, shape or form. With
> >the current scheme, this is no longer guaranteed.
> >
> >Conclusion
> >----------
> >
> >Past experiences from projects such as KDE, GNOME, Mandrake, etc. should be a 
> >good reference point to anyone outlining a localization policy for a project
> >of the size of Fedora. Fedora's point of view is, if a team maintainer
> >is needed, we can do that, as long as no one objects. However, it is not
> >clear as to what would be done if someone objects for no reason. I can simply
> >sit there on the list and object to every maintainer who comes up, just
> >in spite of the project. Would that be taken seriously? What if I have a
> >personal agenda against an individual? Would that suffice? What if, what if?
> >These questions do not have answers yet.
> >
> >It is our hope that this policy would be reviewed and discussed with the
> >community of the many language teams and individual translators, before it
> >is being made as policy. We also hope that this would result in a more
> >reasonable policy that accounts to the fact that some languages already indeed 
> >have a large set of translators and contributors who are organized and 
> >structured. It is also our hope that other language teams of translators would
> >join us in our plea to Fedora to re-consider this policy.
> >
> >
> >References
> >----------
> >
> >[1] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-trans-list/
> >[2] https://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2004-June/msg00046.html
> >[3] http://www.arabeyes.org/
> >[4] http://wiki.arabeyes.org/QAC
> >  
> >
>