Re: Fedora and Translation Teams

[Youcef Rabah Rahal <rahal at arabeyes dot org>]

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Hi,

Mohammed has already answered this post, I'd like to stress on some points 
though.

On Saturday 26 June 2004 16:09, Alan Cox wrote:

[...]

> However
>
> -	Our translation admins don't have a perfect knowledge
> 	of all translation teams

Actually, they... <cough>should</cough> ;)

Sorry to give examples from the 'outside' again, but as many other translators 
stressed on the fact that a comparaison has to be made, I'll do it :-)

In one concrete example, Mandrake, there's a l10n coordinator, who seems to be 
aware of _all_ teams and their coordinators. When I post to their mailing 
list, I'm 'recognized' at once though, believe me, I posted far less on 
Mandrake's lists than on Fedora's. When a new comer posts to the list, he/she 
is immediately asked to join a team if any (or the team coordinator usually 
answers directly) and I don't have any memory where things went bad (people 
refusing or something like that). I have never had to say I am the 
coordinator of Arabic translation, to say we started translation on X date, 
we translated Y strings and we committed Z times... Part of the exchanges on 
the recent thread were due to translation admins not knowing some facts.

[...]

> -	Language teams have a habit of appearing *after* someone has
> 	done the first 99% of the translations

At least for Fedora it's not the case. I can again give the example of 
Mandrake, being translated by Arabeyes (I am coordinating the 
translation...). Actually we 'appeared' after a good deal of translation was 
made, by people who wasn't organized in a team. The work has been stalled for 
some time and thus we asked for maintainership. We could have taken all the 
credit since the translation page of Mandrake makes no mention of any 
previous translators (exept that Arabeyes is the coordinator), no ?:

http://www1.mandrakelinux.com/l10n/ar.php3

However, we were very keen to give credit to the previous translators:

http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Mandrake (see 'Notes').

And their names are in the PO headers too.

About the credits: it's not only important to give people credit for their 
'donations' (the donations here are 'hours of participation and dedication'), 
but also you have a reference to point to in case of an issue. When and 
end-user finds a 'bug' (vocabulary, grammar, or... worse !) in translation, 
you can always refer them to the people who did it. When there's a (known) 
team, it's even better. Rather than being obliged to say: 'Ooops, actually, 
we have no idea who did what...'.

[...]

> The second problem here is I suspect a cultural difference - while the
> Arabic translators may be used to trading essays with references a lot
> of Westerners tend not to bother to read long things but like concise short
> arguments.

As far as I can say, I try to email 'short' posts with clear questions ;-) 
However, my/our questions (until now) are simply being ignored by the 
translation admins. Again, answering them clearly would save to all of us 
'hours' of precious time.

[...]

Best regards,

- -- 
Youcef R. Rahal
Arabeyes.org
http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal
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