Alberto, there are different things to translate: Those on the media and those on some servers: Release Notes and the community distros strings are available online The Release Notes will be changed also after the GA date. Therefore we can translate them at later times as well.

A simple solution to this is to release a file for translations when it's close to its final state. However, I'm not complaining about necessary corrections but about continuous and unnecessary, mainly cosmetic or formal, changes to strings. Often sentences are changed just adding a (.), a \n, a space or reformulated to say the same things.

The problem is not translation - the problem lies in development where some changes are really needed.

As said, there's no problem in this case. :-)

I agree we should strive to get everything out early - in an optimal world, you only translate after all the testing is done. But we're not there ;-(

I'm not really asking for this, but just for a better planning of translation work, which, in my opinion can be done in parallel with development only for the parts which are not changing quickly, while for the rest, which is a reduced set of .po files, it should be postponed. Probably a dedicated (one week?) translation period close to the RC1 or final release would improve things, but I think it would be interesting to read other translators' opinion. With kind regards, Alberto --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-translation+help@opensuse.org

Hi All,

Yes, but others prefer to have files available as early as possible. That's why we have the "official" translation rounds plus unofficial "pre-rounds".

Yes, we like pre-rounds, but this is not good for quality work because the codes are changing and we are not sure which svn revision of the translation include the build. Pre-rounds is good to translate blind as much as we can. So again: we need pre-rounds and we like it.

...

However, I'm not complaining about necessary corrections but about continuous and unnecessary, mainly cosmetic or formal, changes to strings.

Those changes were only allowed (and announced in advance) for the package management stack (zypper, etc.). Sometimes those minor changes slip in while developers are fixing a serious bug -- that's kind of annoying for the translators but hopefully tolerable.

In that case we should slip the release date, because now it sounds the bug fix much more important than the localization. But the truth is both of them needed for a good distribution. When we steal the time from localization for bug fix we lose the quality on the other side. Why we don't change the release date in that case? We need exact dates, deadlines for all kind of packages in the distribution. E.g. I really don't know the new gnome localizations will be in the GMC or not, because it looks it will be pulled from the gnome svn only once. But when? I am working with the Gnome, KDE and other translators and we can help to each others when we have deadlines. But this is black box for us. This is the 5th SUSE version where I try to do my best, but most of the time I am still guess how the whole thing works.

...

Probably a dedicated (one week?) translation period close to the RC1 or final release would improve things, but I think it would be interesting to read other translators' opinion.

RC1 is too late--if you'd miss that date, there would not be a second chance. The last beta is actually already rather late, because there are several hops involved until translations are on the installation media.

We have to change that. Or Alpha builds should be for bug fixes and Beta for localization and other test.

Ladislav has some ideas how we could automate this step more, but writing and testing the scripts takes time, In theory, that's easy: just 'cp', 'tar', and submit the package. But in practice we probably must run several checks on the results; for example, only propose the package for submisssion to the build system if be have better translations.

Good news. We are waiting for the new process. thanks kalman -- Kalman Kemenczy senior consultant SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Your Linux is ready http://www.novell.hu --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-translation+help@opensuse.org

Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

I don't understand these rigid constraints for translators and not for developers myself. Why is RC too late? We are discussing about changing parts, which should be a very limited subset of the .po files. So as release notes are updated when needed, the community repositories are "dynamic" (why not decide which ones to include once for all is not clear, again), why is it so difficult to eventually update other's translations? We are asked for flexibility, so the same is expected on Novell side.

I fully agree with this. The constraints might suit the professional translators, but for the community translators, your goal is to contribute to the distribution, to make it the best localized distribution in our language. By pushing our limits, you makes our job harder, and might result in people leaving the teams in frustration. I'm _NOT_ thinking about bug fixes and spelling errors, but repeated "new" features, and minor changes to the pots, resulting in already translated strings to be marked as fuzzy over and over. openSUSE is dependent on both developers and translators to become the Best Distribution, and by hitting toes on your community translators, you might never get there. Rune Nordbøe Skillingstad -- Chief engineer, IT group, ITIS, DMF, NTNU --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-translation+help@opensuse.org

Karl Eichwalder wrote:

Please, get real ;-) A more or less serious software bug must get fixed, the sooner the better. If a minimal amount of all messages stays untranslated, that's just a cosmetic annoyance--of course, if a major menu entry is affected, it is more cumbersome.

As I've already said, I've no problems with bug fixes. I have not investigated the reason for all the string changes, but some of them, after the string freeze, seems to me more like "added feature"-strings than fixes. I might be wrong, but that doesn't mater, as long the reason/nature of the new strings seldom is explained and we, as translators, feels that there is regular development and changes after string freeze. In stead of taking the defensive approach to concerns raised by the community translators, Novell should listen and seek to get the concerns eliminated. I don't think Albertos first email was out of bounds and as he is not alone, feeling this, there is some issues to solve. Rune Nordbøe Skillingstad -- Chief engineer, IT group, ITIS, DMF, NTNU --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-translation+help@opensuse.org

Dňa Wednesday 19 September 2007 09:54:49 Rune Nordbøe Skillingstad ste napísal:

Karl Eichwalder wrote:

...

Please, get real ;-) A more or less serious software bug must get fixed, the sooner the better. If a minimal amount of all messages stays untranslated, that's just a cosmetic annoyance--of course, if a major menu entry is affected, it is more cumbersome.

As I've already said, I've no problems with bug fixes. I have not investigated the reason for all the string changes, but some of them, after the string freeze, seems to me more like "added feature"-strings than fixes. I might be wrong, but that doesn't mater, as long the reason/nature of the new strings seldom is explained and we, as translators, feels that there is regular development and changes after string freeze.

I suggest to raise a question in a case you think the text freeze was broken without a purpose or pre-warning. Stano

In stead of taking the defensive approach to concerns raised by the community translators, Novell should listen and seek to get the concerns eliminated. I don't think Albertos first email was out of bounds and as he is not alone, feeling this, there is some issues to solve.

Rune Nordbøe Skillingstad

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Please, get real ;-) A more or less serious software bug must get fixed, the sooner the better. If a minimal amount of all messages stays untranslated, that's just a cosmetic annoyance--of course, if a major menu entry is affected, it is more cumbersome.

I'm real :-). A bug in translations is not only cosmetic, especially if it's in the package manager. The release notes usually contain important information about changes made in the new version, and I think their full translation is mandatory in the final release, especially considering many important things changed (libata, intel video drivers, kernel policy, package management, ...). Moreover, half translated applications give a wrong impression of lack of care, which is not what we want I think. With kind regards, Alberto --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-translation+help@opensuse.org

Il giorno mer, 19/09/2007 alle 14.00 +0200, Rinse de Vries ha scritto:

That is why opensuse downloads the latest version during the installation..

Yes I know. But you're assuming either nothing fundamental is written in release notes, or everyone who installs openSUSE can read English, because not everyone has a connection available while installing due to various reasons (lacking drivers, unsupported cards, ...). Moreover, the latest translated version is not necessarily the fully translated version, due to the issues discussed above. In my opinion, release notes, to be useful, has to be available in a fully translated form on media. With kind regards, Alberto --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-translation+help@opensuse.org

--- Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

However, I'm not complaining about necessary corrections but about continuous and unnecessary, mainly cosmetic or formal, changes to strings. Alberto, I couldn't agree more.

I feel the same too. There are cases where I want to upload the translated files, but when checking out, there are already newer versions. It makes me frustrated. :D

Probably a dedicated (one week?) translation period close to the RC1 or final release would improve things, but I think it would be interesting to read other translators' opinion. It's all depend on how much translation works needed and the number of translators. For a small team, 1 week is not enough.

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Hi All, Unfortunately I have the same feeling about translation. My pain is that we never sure when the translations will going to the packages. How often will picked them up from svn. Karl, do his best with YaST, but the other translation process in the LCN and packages are really black box for us. I think we need a process when translators can request a package rebuild. IMHO it should works easily with Build Service. And this is also true for the packages which are comming from the upstreams. Sometimes not possible to put the translations to the core project to release fast enough for the forthcoming distribution. That's why we will need extra language patches for the packages (and we have to remove them if the translations appears in the next release, but we should follow these changes). At this time the best I can do is to analyze the factory package sources, but it's always too late to rebuild some if I see something wrong in them. We need a complex process to solve this issue, because the localisation is one of the _must have_ feature in the non-english contries. thanks kalman

...

...

On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 9:36 am, Stephan Kulow wrote: Am Montag 17 September 2007 schrieb Alberto Passalacqua: Hello, it's the first time I cooperate with the translation of a distribution, so I'm not expert in the field. However, the planning of translations seems lacking to me.

During the official translation period we had changes to .po files which made us translate or check strings again due to unexpected changes, with a significant lack of time for translators.

After string freeze, I may understand the changes to release-notes, but we had changes mainly to zypper, zypp, and, in minor measure to other .po files.

Now an almost completely untranslated .po file appears, while feature and string freezes are passed.

Why isn't a better planning in translation done to avoid repetitive work? It would be enough to set a hard string freeze one month or so before the translation deadline and to make developers absolutely respect it (27 strings changed in release notes!) so to give time to translators to translate strings and proofread only once.

I hope this will be seriously considered for the next openSUSE release.

The release notes is the place where we put last minute changes. So this will never be different - which is also the reason we download them before display.

The PO file in question though isn't bound to the 10.3 release per se. The list of community repositories will be dynamic through the life cycle of the

release, so it will change any time and translations will be pulled in from trunk. New repositories will appear first in english and will then be updated with a translation. This is similiar to the wiki, just that we decided to go

the PO way, so we don't have to maintain different repositories for different languages.

Greetings, Stephan

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Hello Alberto, i am sure thats a very good question, and just to let you know that this "planning" takes place long time now, since i was new in translations. Never had an acceptable answer, so just to let you know that i am with you on your question. cheers 2007/9/17, Alberto Passalacqua :

Hello, it's the first time I cooperate with the translation of a distribution, so I'm not expert in the field. However, the planning of translations seems lacking to me.

During the official translation period we had changes to .po files which made us translate or check strings again due to unexpected changes, with a significant lack of time for translators.

After string freeze, I may understand the changes to release-notes, but we had changes mainly to zypper, zypp, and, in minor measure to other .po files.

Now an almost completely untranslated .po file appears, while feature and string freezes are passed.

Why isn't a better planning in translation done to avoid repetitive work? It would be enough to set a hard string freeze one month or so before the translation deadline and to make developers absolutely respect it (27 strings changed in release notes!) so to give time to translators to translate strings and proofread only once.

I hope this will be seriously considered for the next openSUSE release.

With kind regards, Alberto

Il giorno lun, 17/09/2007 alle 15.36 +0200, Karl Eichwalder ha scritto:

...

In LCN, we now have community-repositories.

Please, ***wait*** with translating it.

We are still testing some details.

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