FOSDEM 2008: L10N meeting (Sunday) ==================================
We meet up with some off the people who where around at Fosdem to discuss in-person how we were doing as a project, and how we could enable ourselves to do things much better. Part of this group had an initial meeting with Max Spevack last year at the same event and that kicked off all the stuff that's been going on in L10N recently. If you have any questions what so ever, don't hesitate to ask on-list.
Attendees: ----------
* Fabian Affolter (de): german maintainer * Michael (sk): new to the L10N project * Marek Mahut (sk): slovak maintainer * Thomas Canniot (fr): french maintainer * Josselin (fr): interested in translation memories * Bart Couvreur (nl): dutch maintainer * Dimitris Glezos (el): greek maintainer, toolchain ninja * Friedel Wolff: writer of pootle (web-based translation tool)
Difficulties in the project: ----------------------------
* Same language can be written in a slightly different way depeneding on the country (de_DE vs de_CH) * Translators need to feel involved * Loss of motivation because the system is to hard to join / use * People need to know English, which actually doesn't have to be the case (proof-reading is also part of translation) * Communication is key factor to succes
Successes in the project: ------------------------
* Creating maintainership role has been a serious boost for the different teams * Centralization of the tools is a huge step in the right direction * Easier for a translator to use: no need to know any CLI tools to get to work, but allowing people who do like CLI to continue their work * Increased visibility in the Fedora project * Metrics showing a serious increase in the project of members, commits, mails, ...
Tools (evaluation + todo): ------
* Damned Lies (stats): 1. (Eval) Branches, languages, modules makes it easier to find stuff. 2. (TODO) Connect DL with Transifex, with easy upload/download links. Possibly merge DL and Transifex, to make it even better (keep the hard parts of DL, and replace the easy ones with Transifex, makes it more dynamic) 3. (TODO) Sorting can be done better: always keep HEAD, tip, master on top to avoid confusion
* Transifex: 1. (Eval) Combining the different VCS has been considerd the major succes the past year 2. (TODO) CLI has highest priority (over HTTP/JSON) 3. (TODO) Ability to check the commits by maintainers 4. (TODO) Increase verbosity, errors, etc 5. (TODO) Locking the files to one person; use mails to check when a files get updates, 6. (TODO) Automatic e-mails to list when pot-files get updated (Update the specific module when a pot-file gets committed, which sends a mail to the list <-> check on the updates-script which files changed and send thoose pot-files at that moment) 7. (TODO) Let Transifex send a mail to the apporpriate list on commits
General ideas: --------------
* Translation memory: keeping the translations consistent, let translators do look-ups to make translations beter * Web translation interface: start to use Pootle to increase the input from the community. Pootle can do suggestion-based translations, which leaves the final responsibility with the translator/maintainer. Pootle can be configured per language, per module, ... . If possible (CLA permits, Legal needs to be contacted) allow outsiders to do suggestions. Pootle can also split a huge translation file into smaller chunks, so different translators can work on it at the same time * Localized spins on release day?
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That's it, feel free to comment on anything, or if you don't get what it's about :-)
Thanks to all who took part in this,
Bart