Hi Andrea,
Not going to do inline responses, but I do want to address a few of
your points bundled together
On 17 October 2015 at 09:14, Andrea Turrini
Or is the mantra applicable only to those that code/develop/put packages together?
Has someone asked comments from translators about possible issues with the new Leap?
If Tumbleweed/Leap are distributed not translated, is it my fault?
These questions which you pose actually do a good job of highlighting the problem which I'm trying to address with my responses to date. There are a number of people who consider themselves part of the 'Translation team' who have a mindset similar to yours and Carlos I normally refer to this problematic mindset with the shorthand of 'us vs them', but your examples give me a lead into explaining it in slightly different terms You have a mindset of dependency. You are doing 'your bit' of the translation, then 'throw it over the wall' to 'the others' and expect them to do what you want with it. This kind of 'throw it over the wall' dependent behaviour is very dysfunctional.
From time to time it occurs in all parts of projects like ours, so it's not a 'technical vs non-technical contributor' thing. We actually have very strong examples of non technical contributors, marketeers, designers, ambassadors, TSP, who really follow the behaviour that 'those who do, decides' is meant to engender.
The mantra of 'those who do, decide' is meant to encourage a feeling of responsibility and ownership for those people who are addressing those issues which they want to take care of If it's broken, they fix it If it needs doing, they do it If it needs someone else to help, they work together. This entire mindset of "We're translators, we're just going to do our thing our way, and the entire project has to accept it" (with the implicit threat of "or else we won't translate anything") is not conductive for a collaborative volunteer community With that mindset, sure, you are 'doing' your little part of the big picture, and sure, you get to 'decide' how you do that..but if you want to fence yourself off from the rest of the project, if you want to ignore that the Project is now focused on rolling release and hybrid release, both of which means translations have to be handled differently, you cannot be surprised when 'they' (the rest of the Project) go and 'do and decide' something else. So yes, if you subscribe to this 'us and them' mindset and call yourself a Translator, when I look at Tumbleweed and Leap and see the state of the Translations there, yes, I think you are at least partially responsible for the current situation. And I think that you should be responsible for the solution, even if, especially if, that means you, as someone who clearly cares about Translations, need to learn new things, speak to new people, establish new processes, use new tools, to fix those new problems Sitting on your hands expecting the Project to conform to processes which have been struggling for years, and are now downright broken, isn't realistic.
Your ideal world: translators agree with everything devs propose. Devs don't need input from translators because they know what it is the best for devs (granted) and translators (not granted at all). This is a very fair ideal world, isn't it?
My ideal world is one in which the translators in my project stop thinking in terms like 'Dev' and 'Translator', and instead realise that they're all contributors and that the best way of working together is by mixing things up and getting down and dirty with finding the solutions as a team. No more walls created by processes which are being rigidly adhered to even when the outputs are categorically proven to be insufficient. My ideal world is one in which the people who currently consider themselves 'Translators' are no longer saying 'we can't do that because...' and instead learning the skills, which in this case includes both communication and technical skills, to be more independent, to be less reliant on others to see their translations be part of the Project. I'd also say my ideal world would include the people you consider to be 'Devs' to try and make steps from the other direction, and try to learn the skills, provide tooling, and start contributing back to the 'Translators'..but, well that's exactly what is already happening, that's how we got to this conversation, people who previously had nothing to do with Translations seeing a problem which affected the Project as a whole and, instead of ranting on mailinglists, making actual practical attempts to step up to fix it. So yes, I'm actually quite happy to see steps towards my ideal world. That said, I do not give the Weblate team a pass for failing to communicate effectively before their work became apparent, but I have nothing but praise for their communication since, and their mindset, seeing a problem and trying their best to fix it, and not avoiding the problem with excuses like "we're not translators" or "this idea goes against established processes" And one final thought on the matter of 'respect' I respect all of the work that all of our Translators have done in the past and in previous releases. It has helped openSUSE be established as a distribution that is known for it's very broad localisation, which is a very important thing for wide scale adoption around the world But when the mindset of some of our translation team is as I've described above, resistant to change, 'us vs them', and quite happy with the concept of living behind a wall and throwing contributions over it every now and again, that respect is eroded. But to be totally blunt, I'd actually look totally past that, if the _output_ of the translation team was effective. If we had half-decent translations of our two distributions, Tumbleweed or Leap, I'd be happy, because ultimately I care more about the actual results from contributions more than I worry about the mindset and method taken to get those results (ie. If it works, sure, I'll take it) But, those of you who have that mindset, do not have the results to back it up. And so, yes, it's a sad but honest fact that my respect for those who carry that mindset is decreasing. And it will continue to be as long as that mindset, and the behaviour it engenders continues. So please, take a step back, and (to blatantly butcher a great man's words), ask not what your Project should do for you, ask what you should do for your Project. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-translation+owner@opensuse.org