Re: [Tails-l10n] Improving Translation Infrastructure

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Autor: sajolida
Datum:  
To: Tails localization discussion
Betreff: Re: [Tails-l10n] Improving Translation Infrastructure
okgoogle:
> Transifex has a bunch of tools that when used properly and actively
> managed (it's only as good as the effort we put into it), mitigate
> your concerns.
>
> I completely relate to the types of problems you are talking about as
> I have had to work through and mitigate them before - including very
> technical items that the average person isn't going to understand.
> It's part of the job helping translators understand complex topics.
> It's part of spreading awareness and learning about UX experience
> with the platform as well. It should always be a concern making sure
> that the translators understood what was being translated so that the
> translation itself made sense to the newcomer perceiving the product
> correctly for the first time in that native language - no matter what
> platform is being used to manage translations.


As a doc writer, I like this idea that having more diverse people trying
to translate our strings make our original strings better :)

> If everyone is completely against the idea of using Transifex then
> it's a mute point to discuss this further, I understand and I guess
> we'll need to stay at the current status/pace until a better solution
> can be found or coded.


We're absolutely not against the idea of using Transifex. As u pointed
out, we went through the process of listing requirements for a better
translation platform, and are not trying to evaluate existing platform
against them.

See for example, what emmapeel reported for Weblate:

https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-l10n/2015-April/002143.html

Of course, your expertise can be really useful in doing this.

For example, some limitation that I thought was important in Transifex
is the fact that you have to add resources manually every time.
Transifex doesn't scan, for example, your Git repo for new PO files. The
times I looked at it, it doesn't either provide a clear structure of
where those PO files belong in our website.

At the moment we have 314 (sic!) PO files for our website, and this will
keep on growing. The perfect translation platform for me would make the
tree structure of our website transparent to translators.

Maybe you can point us to translation projects that have many many
resources to see how they are organized?

> Let's also take a moment to clarify - Transifex will not replace this
> mailing list nor the leaders in it, it will simply help it to scale
> efforts faster so that Tails can spread around the world faster and
> more efficiently. It is a catalyst. It allows us to work smarter, not
> just harder.


I can't speak for the translators, but if we find the perfect online
platform I could see some of them moving there and stop fighting with
the Git command line :)

> The question is, do we want to build new roads to new countries and
> languages take Tails further down the path it is on and hope the
> world adapts to our translation management user experience, or can we
> use existing infrastructures and best practices on a platform that
> thousands of people are already on to stick together and move toward
> our visions of the future more faster and efficiently?
>
>
> I believe in order to open up the world we have to open up our
> process.


We all agree on this and that's why we worked on those requirements and
are now evaluating different platforms against them. But we don't know
yet whether Transifex is the most appropriate one.

--
sajolida