On 2016-03-10 19:04, Karl Ove Hufthammer wrote:
Carlos E. R. skreiv 10. mars 2016 18:32:
On all the upstream projects where I participate, translators have no access to the source tree. That's only for developers.
I have participated in several projects where the translators (at least some of them) have commit access to the source tree.
Me in none. Only here, openSUSE, I have access to the translation svn server. On the rest, I access by email, automated or fully manual.
For instance, with the "Translation Project" ... Translation is only done once the developers submit a release, not for work in progress (would be similar to factory).
IMHO, the way the ‘Translation Project’ works is far from ideal. Your last comment is a case in point; it’s much better if the translators can work on translations continuously, instead of just before a release (and then have to translate a large number of strings at once). And having to send e-mails to update translations is a pain.
I dislike working on a translation continuously. It is a pain. I translate a string, and the next day a dev changes it and I have to change it too. Once, a dev revised (sed?) all strings adding stops to hundreds of sentences. I had to re-translate hundreds of strings. Of course, trivial change, but still, many strings. Hours. I prefer working on a project that is not changing. It is a personal choice. That's why I don't translate factory (even if I could, which currently I can't). Others do like to translate factory. Aside that, the TP is quite bureaucratical, yes.
Check how KDE team work (upstream). I will not describe it, as I don't work there, but they have directories where all files are stored for translation. Other people here can describe the process (I think somebody did, not very long ago).
I work as a translator for KDE. There the translators have commit access, and fetch and commit translations using SVN. It works extremely well. Translators just have to do a
svn up
to fetch the files, translate them and then do a
svn commit
But not against the source tree the devs use, but your own, for translation, right?
The translations automatically appear in the released applications (it feels almost like magic :) ). And the translations files are automatically updated (with new/changes strings) each night¹. Easy peasy, and no hassle for the translators. (And when an application is renamed, moved, split into an application + library or have other changes that need changes in the translation files (this happens frequently), the nice people at KDE automatically do the needed changes to all the translation files.)
What about different releases, how are they handled?
In KDE, all applications used to live in the same SVN repository. But a few years ago they were split into multiple Git repositories, stored in several different places (e.g., some at GitHub) (and a few applications stayed in SVN). But it was decided that keeping the central SVN (not Git) repository for translations would be best. So that’s what we use, and it works perfectly. Each language has its own directory (and there’s of course also a templates directory).
The other option would be for the translator to manually hunt down each and every application and library (there are many hundreds) repository, and manually fetch the source code and commit the translations to them (or send pull requests), which would of course be untenable. Even having to download the hundred of gigabytes of data from the repositories would be difficult for most translators. But now they just have to type
svn up
To get all the latest translations files (for one’s language) to translate. It’s even faster than launching a browser. :) Could anything be simpler?
Yes, the methodology at KDE is wonderful :-) I would love that here.
Footnote: ¹ I said that in KDE the translations files are automatically updated (with new/changes strings) each night. Note that it’s also possible to opt out of this (by placing a ‘magic’ file in one language’s translation directory), and merge the translation files oneselves, if one prefers. Some teams prefer this, and there are some advantages in getting to decide when (and how) to update the translation files.
It gets a nuisance when your working copy doesn't match the copy on the svn. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)