[FM Discuss] Translating and localizing Sugar (was Fwd: [Localization] Fwd: Translation Team report)

[Edward Cherlin]

It appears that our translation facilities in booki are arriving none
too soon. It also appears that we would do well to write a book about
them, and about Pootle administration.

I have asked whether the section on L10N in the Make Your Own Sugar
Activities book is adequate to their needs.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 00:25
Subject: [Localization] Fwd: Translation Team report
To: Sugar-dev Devel <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>, OLPC
Localization list <localization at lists.laptop.org>


I was asked to re-post this message to sugar-devel by Walter Bender.
I have intentionally cross-posted to the Localization list as well.
Please check both list's archives for responses.

cjl

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 12:32 AM
Subject: Translation Team report
To: Chris Ball <cjb at laptop.org>, Walter Bender <walter at sugarlabs.org>,
Aleksey Lim <alsroot at member.fsf.org>, mchua at laptop.org, Adam Holt
<holt at laptop.org>, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at sugarlabs.org>, Sebastian
Silva <sebastian at fuentelibre.org>, Bert Freudenberg
<bert at freudenbergs.de>


Dear SLOBs,

I saw a comment in the SLOBs 2010-12-23 minutes that you wanted
reports from the various Sugar Labs teams, please consider this to be
a report from the Translation Team (at least from my personal
perspective).  Some of these comments may be seen as critical of
organizations (or elements thereof), but I hope it is understood that
my intent is to point out areas where improvement is needed and that
my criticism is matched by my own efforts to contribute
constructively.  Feel free to circulate or post this as you see fit.
I'd be happy to try to answer any questions that come up
<cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com>.

Sayamindu's transition to graduate student left a gap in the
Translation Team's coverage of critical back-end issues (Pootle
maintenance, adding new projects and connecting Pootle to git).
Recently Rafael Ortiz (dirakx) has stepped up and begun taking up some
of the slack (performing a Pootle upgrade, addressing a series of
backlogged tickets related to adding L10n for new activities).  This
has been very helpful, but additional sysadmin-type support of the
Pootle server would help to share that burden and provide essential
redundancy in the arcane Pootle arts.  I would encourage the SLOBs to
be on the look-out to recruit additional talent to/from the Sugar Labs
Systems team to the cause of localization to address a number of
issues that remain unresolved.

There seems to have been a breakdown in the branching / versioning
process (as reflected in Pootle).  We have Glucose / Fructose pairs
for Sugar 0.82 and 0.84 as archival projects, but there has been no
versioning since, with only the un-numbered Glucose / Fructose
projects (reflecting no freeze of versions 0.88, 0.90 or branching for
the newly released 0.92).  This may be a significant issue as
development continues with certain of these versions (e.g. 0.88 for
dextrose), but no frozen set of localization strings exists to
correspond to these frozen releases.

In addition, this breakdown is also reflected in what I see as a
disturbing lack of communication to the Localization list about string
freezes and release dates.  I take some personal responsibility for
not having stayed on top of release schedules and not performing this
communication myself as I have in the past, but it is very important
that L10n be top-of-mind for the Release team and that communication
to the Localization list about string freezes be a responsibility that
developers take quite seriously.

It would be very helpful if the Sugar Labs Activity Team strongly
encouraged developers to perform internationalization of their
submissions to ASLO.  I see this as another area where there is too
much daylight between the development and localization processes and
Sugar Labs (particularly key influential developers / maintainers)
could do a better job of advocating for i18n / L10n by developing and
communicating a clearer set of expectations of activity authors to
assure the widest possible audience for their work.  If large portions
of this project exist only in English, I fear it will have failed it's
mission.  Admittedly, there exists some confusion about the correct
procedures for POT generation and continuing synchronization (even
among fairly experienced developers and not excluding myself), when
this clarifies, improving our documentation would be desirable.

As for the Localization community itself, it continues to grow with
new localizers joining weekly to a total of approximately 1800
registered Pootle users as of the current date working on over 100
languages and dialects.  As one might expect, European languages are
fairly well covered and current, while the non-European languages are
much less adequately staffed and in particular there is often not an
active language administrator (to perform QA reviews and commits to
git) for these other languages.  There are a number of languages that
were set up by specific request that subsequently have seen little or
no L10n activity. (Akan, Maltese, Sanskrit, Crioulo, Quechua, Aymara
and a fair number of OLPC Oceania languages).

One notable issue is the poor coverage of some languages that are
important to OLPC deployments as noted in my message on the thread
about 11.2.0 language support:

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2011-February/031092.html

It is critical that OLPC lay the groundwork for these deployments by
recruiting L10n volunteers from these languages that do not have a
large user-base footprint on the Internet (at present).  I see this as
an organizational responsibility that OLPC has neglected.  It is
unfortunate that although they have an entire team based in Rwanda,
the Kinyarawanda L10n effort has only recently gained an OLPC
recruited localizer.  OLPC is uniquely positioned to recruit
localizers for their deployment languages and it is my opinion that
their efforts have fallen short of the mark.

While by no means unique to the Sugar Labs / OLPC / eToys L10n
project, there remains a significant challenge with handling
longer-form (content) localization work.   I see this as an issue that
is potentially stunting the growth of content development and in
particular the sharing of content developed by one deployment with
others.  Unfortunately, I have no particular solution to offer,
FLOSSManuals represents one model, but I do not think it has truly had
success in supporting L10n.  A Pootle-based solution would be ideal.

On a related note, I believe that OLPC is missing a critical
opportunity by not dedicating some resources to the i18n of the Help
activity which is essentially a snapshot of the FLOSSManuals XO book
wrapped as a Sugar Activity.  This issue was noted as a genuine
problem by Beth Santos in her efforts in Sao Tome when we spoke at a
recent fund-raiser for STEP UP OLPC.  Having onboard XO help that
exists only in English is a "fail".

Much of the above clearly falls in the category of opinion, but I stand by it.

cjl


_______________________________________________
Localization mailing list
Localization at lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization




-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/