[Systems] translate.sl.o

[Sebastian Silva]

Hi Chris,
First of all let me reaffirm that I share your notion of the importance 
of i18n for this project and greatly value the contribution you have 
done. I think I was too fast in +1'ing the proposal without all the 
information you have kindly shared. So -1 on "dropping" pootle! :-P

There remains an issue as I said that we have very poor connection 
thrughout deployments and this makes working with pootle as the only 
option difficult. In Peru alone there are 61 native languages and I 
think it is vital to try to support them. Of course an "unhosted" 
workflow is only part of the story for this.

I would love to work on this with you when we have the resources for 
making another go at native languages.
Sincerely,
Sebastian

El 19/04/11 16:33, Chris Leonard escribió:
> On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Bernie Innocenti 
> <bernie at sugarlabs.org <mailto:bernie at sugarlabs.org>> wrote:
>
>     On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 11:54 -0500, Rafael Ortiz wrote:
>     >
>     > Although this off-line workflow  would save us a lot of headaches,
>     > imo is a work overhead  both for translators and activity devs, we
>     > must  make the work needed to do activities on  sugar, the most
>     > pleasant one.
>
>     Perhaps it's because I'm a geek, but if I were translateing Sugar to
>     Italian I'd appreciate using my favorite text editor, without any
>     network delay and with the ability to test the new strings immediately
>     in Sugar.
>
>     I can see how humans may prefer a simple web interface over a text
>     editor, but how do they test their work when they work in Pootle?
>
>     Let me guess it: they don't test at all! :-)
>
>     This would also explain why so many translations look awkward or
>     out of
>     context.
>
>     To check if Pootle is really necessary, I'd like to see the list
>     of the
>     10 most active translators and see how many of them wouldn't be
>     able to
>     work directly with the po file.
>
>
>
> Please forgive me if my rhetoric seems impassioned and for the length 
> of my reply, but I do feel quite strongly about this issue.  I will 
> try to distinguish my logical and verifiable arguments from those that 
> come from my gut.
>
> The top five submitters are listed at the bottom of the Pootle home page:
>
> Submissions
> cjl              25532
> readmanr   6055 (mostly from en_GB, hardly counts as L10n)
> aputsiaq     3402 (a heroic effort in lang-da)
> subbu         2665 (lang-kn, mostly an eToys localizer)
> rubina         2545 (another heroic effort in lang-hy at special 
> request of OLPC)
>
> Key Pootle functions:
>
> Being able to easily access statistics like those above is just one of 
> many functions that Pootle performs above and beyond holding POT 
> files. These stats are broken down by language and project and serve 
> as my primary means of identifying potential language admins.
>
> Pootle is absolutely essential to my own work as a L10n community 
> organizer.  The translation memory function of the Terminology project 
> is important for consistency and productivity, the built-in pofilter 
> review tab is critical for enabling quality control processes.  
> Suggestions are only possible in the context of a Pootle server, they 
> are not contained within the PO file format itself, which only has 
> "fuzzy" flagging.  No such advantages are available in an unhosted 
> solution.
>
> Disadvantages of unhosted localisation workflows:
>
> There are a few projects that use a CVS/repo for POT files and a 
> mailing list for submissions.  Their localizations are typically in 
> fewer languages than web-hosted localization workflows (Pootle, 
> Transifex, Damned Lies) and also suffer from significant quality issues.
>
> I've compiled a good number of links to upstream projects (separating 
> hosted from unhosted L10n workflows) on this page:
>
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Translation_Team/Upstream_localization
>
> I've also looked over the results of these unhosted efforts quite 
> closely.  Consider these statistics for Spanish (the most commonly 
> localized second language and one quite important to Sugar Labs / 
> OLPC) on a number of well-known packages that use a repo/mailing list 
> L10n workflow.  On hosted solutions lang-es is typically 99-100% complete.
>
> Abiword is only about 90% complete in Spanish.
>
> Inkscape is a little over 80% translated in Spanish.
>
> Gnash is about 25% complete in Spanish and it's translation quality is 
> frankly pathetic.
>
> Community Impact:
>
> A far less radical shift (Fedora going from an internally hosted 
> Transifex instance to an externally hosted Transifex instance) caused 
> L10n community unrest in Feb/Mar of this year as it was done without 
> adequate community consultation and was seen as a breach of trust 
> between the Infrastructure Team and the Localization Team.  We cannot 
> come to any conclusion without adequate consultation with the L10n 
> community itself.
>
> It should also be considered that "dropping" Pootle could be seen as 
> breaking faith with the eToys community and in my opinion would be a 
> betrayal of our localization community.  No such decision can be taken 
> on this private systems list, it would require input from the 
> localizers and should be taken to the Oversight Board.  I would see a 
> conversion to an unhosted L10n workflow as a disastrous failure on the 
> part of Sugar Labs to support it's mission and it would almost 
> certainly cause me to reconsider whether the time and effort I have 
> contributed over the past several years to that mission was valued 
> highly enough for it to be worth continuing my involvement with the 
> project.
>
> There are other hosted L10n workflow tools that could be investigated, 
> but they will all come with their own unique problems.  I am not 
> unsympathetic to the maintenance costs of Pootle, but I do not think 
> we have reasonably exhausted the appropriate avenues to stabilize our 
> instance, nor am I aware of it being an inordinate maintenance burden 
> compared to the mission-critical function(s) it provides.  I have not 
> seen any posts on the upstream Pootle list documenting the issues 
> (which I don't fully understand) or asking for assistance.  They are 
> fairly responsive to request for help.   I filed a ticket requesting 
> an enhancement (not even a bug) in Virtaal and it was rolled out in 
> trunk in three weeks.
>
> In essence, what you are suggesting in going to an unhosted L10n 
> workflow is the equivalent of saying, we will not maintain a wiki, but 
> we will give you an FTP site.  It is my opinion that we do not have 
> the strength or depth in our cadre of language admins to make this 
> switch succeed in the long run, nor do we have the resources t odo a 
> thorough job of assessing and migrating to a different hosted L10n 
> workflow solution, even if one were identified that accomplished as 
> much as Pootle does.
>
> Respectfully Yours,
>
> cjl
>
>
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-- 
Sebastian Silva
Oversight Board Member
Sugar Labs

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