First, I am just a stating *my own* openion here and it is not *fedora* openion or redhat.
I am getting confused and lost in the long emails. Can Mohamed or Youcef please explain in short email, in points : what are the problems as I failed to follow all long emails here. I do not see any changes in the policys, the only thing happened was to prevent multiple translators committing changes at same time.
I went through Mohamed email and I am not sure where all these issues came from?
I belive that by people establish teams here, things will be start to shape and take better form. Let me ask first, when Arabeyes started translation, did they have full list of things how it should be? Things are still being built and taking final shape. I belive in the freedom of allowing people to contribute.
The main goal I see here is to provide traslation. Is the translation provided by certain people will be final and for good? I doubt! To establish a translation first is the first step. I belive yet to come a lot of tuning and enhancement.
I am not aginst keeping things the same across all modules, and similar to other translations. For sure will be great to have team like Arabeyes team to contribute. Yet, why assuming anyone else who would like to contribute would cause a mess because s/he decided not to be part of Arabeyes.
So, to keep this discussion constructive, can we discuss here what are the requirment or the right way someone think the system should be ? I had hard time to get clear requirment or request. I only found hey this policy is no good, why this should be this way. It would be better to be hey why do not we have things this way.
Thanks
Sherif
On Fri, 2004-06-25 at 09:06, Bernd Groh wrote:
Wow! I am completely and utterly confused now. For the record, the main change that has been undertaken is the [Take], [Release] mechanism, that is to prevent two translators from comitting at the same time. Can anyone tell me what exactly happened here? *confused* We did not introduce any new policy, we merely, as said, implemented a mechanism to prevent two translators from comitting at the same time. And one thing I should mention, since I am not clear whether it is clear or not, though it should be, what I am saying here on list is *not* Fedora policy, it is *my* opinion. I believe in my opinion and in my right to state it, that I've implemented this new system for the Fedora project has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Regards, Bernd
Mohammed Elzubeir schrieb:
Salam,
This is intended to all translators involved in Fedora, whether they are involved for Arabic or any other language. It is also intended for the people who shape the policies and tools used by and for the translators.
To all Arabeyes members who are involved in translations, I would strongly advise you to join the fedora translation list [1] to voice your opinions, in order to allow the Fedora maintainers to better understand our requirements.
Introduction
Fedora recently announced [2] a new system which nullifies pre-existing language translation teams. This is not to say that they had such an explicit policy, in the past but they are now saying that it is definitely not the policy. What do they want to do then? They want to have translator per module. What does this mean? Simple. There is module A that translator X can take, translate, release. Translator Y comes along, takes A, translates, releases. The same goes for modules B, C, etc.
Sounds good, eh? More people can easily contribute. What this will result in is complete and utter chaos. Allow me to elaborate.
The Loss of Consistency
There will be absolutely no conherence among translations. Each translator, depending on their language skills will have their own interpretation of strings. They will also have their own vocabulary that will most certainly conflict with someone else's in the overall translation.
The Loss of Quality Control
Since there is no group overseeing the quality of the translation, there are no assurances that the quality of translation is up to any standard. So who says what is standard? In the case of Arabic, the Arabeyes Project [3] has set up a committee (Quality Assurance Comittee [4]) that is specifically tasked with overseeing such standardizations across all translation projects. This is something that other projects can learn from. However, with such a scheme standards published by the QAC have no means of being implemented.
The Loss of Communication
Since there is no group, each individual translator is on their own island with their own ideas of how things should be done. This does not affect Fedora alone. This affects how Arabic is translated across a variety of localized applications and libraries.
This additionally creates a very serious problem for a large project, like Arabeyes. For example, in order to perform CVS sync's, the maintainer now has to manually see what module he still has control over and what modules he does not. In other words, a 5 minutes job will now take 50 minutes.
The Loss of a Community
This scheme completely obliterates the sense and spirit of a community. In the case of Arabic, this took very hard long years to build and foster. With such a scheme, this community no longer needs to exist and is simply put back to an individual doing a couple strings and going home forgetting about the work he/she has modified.
The Loss of Credit
Arabeyes has taken great pains to ensuring that credit is given to each and every individual who has contributed in any way, shape or form. With the current scheme, this is no longer guaranteed.
Conclusion
Past experiences from projects such as KDE, GNOME, Mandrake, etc. should be a good reference point to anyone outlining a localization policy for a project of the size of Fedora. Fedora's point of view is, if a team maintainer is needed, we can do that, as long as no one objects. However, it is not clear as to what would be done if someone objects for no reason. I can simply sit there on the list and object to every maintainer who comes up, just in spite of the project. Would that be taken seriously? What if I have a personal agenda against an individual? Would that suffice? What if, what if? These questions do not have answers yet.
It is our hope that this policy would be reviewed and discussed with the community of the many language teams and individual translators, before it is being made as policy. We also hope that this would result in a more reasonable policy that accounts to the fact that some languages already indeed have a large set of translators and contributors who are organized and structured. It is also our hope that other language teams of translators would join us in our plea to Fedora to re-consider this policy.
References
[1] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-trans-list/ [2] https://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2004-June/msg00046.htm... [3] http://www.arabeyes.org/ [4] http://wiki.arabeyes.org/QAC
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 01:18:27PM -0400, Sherif Abdelgwad wrote:
First, I am just a stating *my own* openion here and it is not *fedora* openion or redhat.
Likewise,
DISCLAIMER: The following does NOT represent Arabeyes' views in any way, shape or form. These are my personal views and I stand 100% by them.
I am getting confused and lost in the long emails. Can Mohamed or Youcef please explain in short email, in points : what are the
No, read the long emails. Reading it takes a shorter amount of time than it takes for you to write this response.
problems as I failed to follow all long emails here. I do not see any changes in the policys, the only thing happened was to prevent multiple translators committing changes at same time.
No, that's not all tha thas happened. Read my response to Groh.
I went through Mohamed email and I am not sure where all these issues came from?
It comes from you objecting for Youcef to become the maintainer of the Arabic trasnaltion. What gives YOU the right to object, without giving any reasoning?
I belive that by people establish teams here, things will be start to shape and take better form. Let me ask first, when Arabeyes started translation, did they have full list of things how it should be? Things are still being built and taking final shape. I belive in the freedom of allowing people to contribute.
And you are suggesitng that Arabeyes does NOT provide this freedom? This is a rather unacceptable attack that has no basis and is completely uncalled for.
The main goal I see here is to provide traslation. Is the translation provided by certain people will be final and for good? I doubt! To establish a translation first is the first step. I belive yet to come a lot of tuning and enhancement.
Yes, I believe Arabeyes has been doing this for long enough to know these steps.
I am not aginst keeping things the same across all modules, and similar to other translations. For sure will be great
Oh please. Be against it ;)
to have team like Arabeyes team to contribute. Yet, why assuming anyone else who would like to contribute would cause a mess because s/he decided not to be part of Arabeyes.
Ask that question to why anyone would want to join any translation team? This is a silly question and it has no meaning. If it is because you hate the Arabeyes project (for your own reasons, you are entitled to them, so am I, eh?).. and you don't want to be a part of it, but you want to translate for fedora... if that is the case, STATE it. In which case, just like I told Groh, I would personally prefer if Arabeyes withdraws completely from Fedora and wish you happy translating.
So, to keep this discussion constructive, can we discuss here what are the requirment or the right way someone think the system should be ? I had hard time to get clear requirment or request. I only found hey this policy is no good, why this should be this way. It would be better to be hey why do not we have things this way.
Perhaps you missed THIS part?
Past experiences from projects such as KDE, GNOME, Mandrake, etc. should be a good reference point to anyone outlining a localization policy for a project of the size of Fedora. Fedora's point of view is, if a team maintainer is needed, we can do that, as long as no one objects. However, it is not
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
No, read the long emails. Reading it takes a shorter amount of time than it takes for you to write this response.
I guess it was mistake to even try to reply, thank .. no need for me to read anything. Wasting my time.
I went through Mohamed email and I am not sure where all these issues came from?
It comes from you objecting for Youcef to become the maintainer of the Arabic trasnaltion. What gives YOU the right to object, without giving any reasoning?
I am an arabic speaking person who has the right to object .. Who ar YOU to talk like this? I stand to my right to object and it is not only me who object , yet it is not me who decide anyway. You better start talking in better tone. If you still need to carry a professional conversation. Otherwise do not even bother to reply to my email.
And you are suggesitng that Arabeyes does NOT provide this freedom? This is a rather unacceptable attack that has no basis and is completely uncalled for.
I did not acuse nor attacked arabyes so drop the defencive tone here, and focus on the translation effort, after all this is fedora community not arabeyes community. I am talking about teams here composed from people regardless if they belong to certain group or lug.
Yes, I believe Arabeyes has been doing this for long enough to know these steps.
good so discuss the steps you want, tell the ppl here what you need instead of wasting time on attacking, be objetive, unless it is a mession that arabeyes.org is to claim it has all the arabization effort, and you are defencing that.
I am not aginst keeping things the same across all modules, and similar to other translations. For sure will be great
Oh please. Be against it ;)
Oh please change your tone or stop reply.
Ask that question to why anyone would want to join any translation team? This is a silly question and it has no meaning.
Thanks for that.
If it is because you hate the Arabeyes project (for your own reasons, you are entitled to them, so am I, eh?).. and you don't want to be a part of it, but you want to translate for fedora... if that is the case, STATE it. In which case, just like I told Groh, I would personally prefer if Arabeyes withdraws completely from Fedora and wish you happy translating.
If I wanted to do anything I would have done it. I did release the module once I knew there is _someone_ who still activly translating it. I could not care less if it is arabeyes represntitive or normal person. I am entitle to my openion as an arabic speaking person who would like to contribute in an open source project, and I am not taking any privilages over here, so stop acusing me as I never acused arabeyes. My openion about certain group is my personal openion, and I guess I did not accuse anyone nor I said ohhh arabeyes bad guys and I do not want to be with them. You prove to me everytime by your reply on different ocusion that I stand right to my openion, such behaviour and way of talking.
Are you threatening to leave unless I go away or not talk over here? I am not sure what is your problem? It seems you missing something here .. I never attacked arabeyes here nor acused you guys with anything, I said I have issues with the translation here, did you ever care to ask me what are my concerns ? You always jump to defence blindly first, attacking and talk in such a way far from being professional. Yet, everytime you greatly manage to make me regret to even do anything for the middle east or the arab ppl, or even think about translation.
Look here and see the emails before you attack .. I had no idea no intention to do anything , I did claim that Arabeyes did not translate almost all the po files, I found an object which needs translation, oh I have time now, then I decided to translate it. Took one full day to check the other translation so that my translation seems odd. Yet all what I get acusing "that person has nothing to do with translation" , "that person hates arabeyes" , "that person did not contribute ..etc"
It was an honest attempt to translate without anything on my side aginst arabeyes. The min I did read the emails about someone had that module and wish to finish it, I did release it, I did not even aruge that I have it and he should leave it to me. Now you are jumping here acusing me with bull. I would appreciate if you forget about me and just focus on translation if that is the real goal. If your real goal is Arabeyes to be the organization which have claim arabization of Fedora & Red Hat just state this and deal with a professional demand on that.
this should be this way. It would be better to be hey why do not we have things this way.
Perhaps you missed THIS part?
Perhaps I was totally wrong to even talk here. Wasted my time and got accused. Have fun translating and maintaing the arabic modules if you wish.
P.S. if you ever want to reply, drop the tone you are using. I would appreciate if you just drop the subject totally and forget that I even posted anything or tried to translate, enough from my time. Enjoy.
Thanks
Sherif
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Typo:
I did claim that Arabeyes did not translate almost all the po files,
The above should read:
"I did NOT claim that arabeyes did not translate almost all the po files."
Thanks
Sherif
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 05:05:02PM -0400, Sherif Abdelgawad wrote:
No, read the long emails. Reading it takes a shorter amount of time than it takes for you to write this response.
I guess it was mistake to even try to reply, thank .. no need for me to read anything. Wasting my time.
Then why are you replying? ;) I think we all want to get this done in the best way it can be for Arabic.
I am an arabic speaking person who has the right to object .. Who ar YOU to talk like this? I stand to my right to object and
Well, that explains it. You are Arabic speaking, so you object. I don't mean to burst your bubble here, but I am questioning the rationale behind the objection, not your mother tongue. I object to Fedora's current system because I find it counter-productive for translations. I clearly stated why it is so, and I pointed to other projects which have been doing this successfully. You are objecting because you have the right to? I'm not sure I follow the logic involved.
A logical reason would be, "Youcef and his team are doing a poor job, so poor that it is beyond repair. I would like to take over his role and fix those problems." Even with that, I would disagree, but at least it is a somewhat logical reason. Your reason is, I have the right to.
it is not only me who object , yet it is not me who decide
Well, those who object should speak out then. Is it an embarassing thing?
[..]
I did not acuse nor attacked arabyes so drop the defencive tone here, and focus on the translation effort, after all this is fedora community not arabeyes community. I am talking about teams here composed from people regardless if they belong to certain group or lug.
You are right, I may be unnecessarily defensive. However, I am very well aware of your feelings about Arabeyes as a whole -- which you made abundantly clear in the past to other people.
good so discuss the steps you want, tell the ppl here what you need instead of wasting time on attacking, be objetive, unless it is a mession that arabeyes.org is to claim it has all the arabization effort, and you are defencing that.
Oh no. Our mission is to bring Arabic to Linux and Unix, Arabeyes is but a vehicle. I think your ill feelings about Arabeyes stem from the very misunderstanding of what Arabeyes is.
[..]
If I wanted to do anything I would have done it. I did release the module once I knew there is _someone_ who still activly translating it. I could not care less if it is arabeyes represntitive or normal person. I am entitle to my openion as an arabic speaking
Believe it or not, Arabeyes members are normal people (at least most of us think of ourselves as normal ;). You are, however, contradicting yourself. You don't mind releasing the module (which you have released and taken and released, etc.) but you mind Youcef being the maintainer (oh, because you have the right to?). I am rather perplexed by all that.
person who would like to contribute in an open source project, and I am not taking any privilages over here, so stop acusing me as I never acused arabeyes. My openion about certain group
Yes you have. I have no intentions of digging into that -- I am simply pointing out that you are already carrying some old baggage against Arabeyes and so it should be noted. In other words, I don't take your opinion as unbiased or objective -- and I ask others to consider this when reading your opinions.
[..]
Are you threatening to leave unless I go away or not talk over here? I am not sure what is your problem?
Unfortunately (for me), and fortunately for the Arab Open Source community, I do not have the say in this. I can simply suggest it.
It seems you missing something here .. I never attacked arabeyes here nor acused you guys with anything, I said
You are right. Not here.
I have issues with the translation here, did you ever care to ask me what are my concerns ? You always jump
I believe Youcef has asked you to explain your issues. This is why Arabeyes exists, in case you haven't noticed. It provides an open forum for people to discuss such issues. We setup QAC specifically for this. You are still free to join the QAC and participate in forming such decisions.
to defence blindly first, attacking and talk in such a way far from being professional. Yet, everytime you
It takes two to tango.
greatly manage to make me regret to even do anything for the middle east or the arab ppl, or even think about translation.
That is your prerogative.
Look here and see the emails before you attack .. I had no idea no intention to do anything , I did [not] claim that Arabeyes did not translate almost all the po files,
I think it would help if you also think of Arabeyes as "The Arab Open Source Community". We are not a commercial entity. I know you didn't say that we were, but sometimes it is good to point it out.
I found an object which needs translation, oh I have time now, then I decided to translate it. Took one full day to check the other translation so that my translation seems odd. Yet all what I get acusing "that person has nothing to do with translation" , "that person hates arabeyes" , "that person did not contribute ..etc"
I think everyone can appreciate such effort. Unfortunately, just like with the current system at Fedora, it does not help -- kind of like a student who gets A for effort but fails the class anyway.
[..] me with bull. I would appreciate if you forget about me
You make it hard to forget about you ;)
and just focus on translation if that is the real goal. If your real goal is Arabeyes to be the organization which have claim arabization of Fedora & Red Hat just state this and deal with a professional demand on that.
Once again, "claims" are a by-product, it is by no means a "mission". If you think you can put together a team and coordinate yourself, then great. We would then hope to be able to coordinate standards of translations together. It so happens that Arabeyes handles a handful of translation projects (among other things). So, coordinating with Arabeyes, whether you wish to go at it alone or with Arabeyes, is in Fedora's best interest.
Perhaps I was totally wrong to even talk here. Wasted my time and got accused. Have fun translating and maintaing the arabic modules if you wish.
Yes, then withrdraw your objection and let us continue to do the work we have been doing since March 12, 2004.
[..]
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On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
Then why are you replying? ;) I think we all want to get this done in the best way it can be for Arabic.
I am replying because you accused me, and I hope this ends.
Well, that explains it. You are Arabic speaking, so you object. I don't mean to burst your bubble here, but I am questioning the rationale behind the objection, not your mother tongue. I object to Fedora's current system because I find it counter-productive for translations. I clearly stated why it is so, and I pointed to other projects which have been doing this successfully. You are objecting because you have the right to? I'm not sure I follow the logic involved.
A logical reason would be, "Youcef and his team are doing a poor job, so poor that it is beyond repair. I would like to take over his role and fix those problems." Even with that, I would disagree, but at least it is a somewhat logical reason. Your reason is, I have the right to.
Oh no .. now you are definitly wrong. I did not ask for taking over his role nor I said I will not tell him what are my concerns. I object because I have concerns and issues, and with the current handling of issue at arabeyes, which you prove it now, that they attack if someone say hey I do not like it this way. All what I said that I have concerns about the translation which means that there are things I would rather discuss.
I object because I find something wrong in the way things are handled. A better way you should do is to ask me what is wrong, and ask me how to fix it as a team. I never claimed that Arabeyes is wrong or doing bad things. I always complained about how you guys handle things. Which you are proving now.
it is not only me who object , yet it is not me who decide
Well, those who object should speak out then. Is it an embarassing thing?
It is up to them, if they did not speak it is their problem. I am aware of at least 2 ppl objecting. Do not you think you better discuss how things should be and allow more somothely ppl to feel OK to join you rather than attacking?
You are right, I may be unnecessarily defensive. However, I am very well aware of your feelings about Arabeyes as a whole -- which you made abundantly clear in the past to other people.
<snip>
Oh no. Our mission is to bring Arabic to Linux and Unix, Arabeyes is but a vehicle. I think your ill feelings about Arabeyes stem from the very misunderstanding of what Arabeyes is.
I stated my feeling clearly that the way you handle any issue is not something I feel is right. I might be right, might be wrong. But you never stopped and tried to discuss things, you always jump to attack. I clearly mentioned before that I do respect the group, and have nothing personal against. I am very much wished to help and contribute, yet everytime I try to get closer you fire without reason.
Linux-Egypt are working on arabic fedora distro, which I am contributing in. I did suggest on their forum to build RPMs for Arabeyes projects. Do you think I would do such thing if I have what you called "ill-feeling" aginst arabeyes.
You really mis-understood me and acting really in unnecessarily definsive way.
Believe it or not, Arabeyes members are normal people (at least most of us think of ourselves as normal ;). You are, however, contradicting yourself. You don't mind releasing the module (which you have released and taken and released, etc.) but you mind Youcef being the maintainer (oh, because you have the right to?). I am rather perplexed by all that.
Now you are telling lies I belive. I only took the module once and I did release at the min I did learn that there is someone wants it. Which normally person will send email if things happened asking that he was doing this work and it seems I am assigned to it which prevents him from doing his work. A nice email would have got that done without all that misunderstanding and attacking.
You may ask Brend to check the logs and tell you if I ever took the module again. See my point here? It is not me who have ill-feeling here, you assumed and attacked and thought I am playing game or something, which I am honestly not.
I explained why I object, yet I had not problem releasing the module. I belive it is his right to finish it, and I quitly did release it. Because next,as I told him in an email I will discuss my issues or concerns about the translation. Yet I find you jump in defensing something never happened. Having a memory more than a year ago for a discussion, accusing me that I took , released, took, released the module which is far from truth.
Yes you have. I have no intentions of digging into that -- I am simply pointing out that you are already carrying some old baggage against Arabeyes and so it should be noted. In other words, I don't take your opinion as unbiased or objective -- and I ask others to consider this when reading your opinions.
It seems it is you who are carrying old memory for a conversation we had before. Yet, I think you forgot that we talked on IRC and I cleared where I stand. I even tried to subscribe to your mailing list. Yet it was one of your member who attacked me later and casued me to loose the interest even to discuss anything. Yet I have no problems with arabeyes. I am planning to provide RPMs for your packages, offering to do that in an arabic distribution currently in the process and should be out. So I do not think with me offering to do that I would be against arabeyes. I may have concerns, yes, but yet I do respect your effort.
I would appreciate if you do not point something on my behave. My openion never saif anything about Arabeyes, you the one having old memory and assuming I am acting on that. Let me clear this again here and publically I am not. Read again my posts here and forget about your assumption because it is wrong.
Unfortunately (for me), and fortunately for the Arab Open Source community, I do not have the say in this. I can simply suggest it.
Suggestion to leave the community ? Oh let me tell you that translation is not a rocket since, and belive me Linux is growing fast in middle east, and if you are not the Arabic community I am afraid so speak about Arabeyes. Yet I did not ask you to leave nor I am going to contribute to anything. So rest your case here, and stop this behavior which I would call it childish more than anything else.
I believe Youcef has asked you to explain your issues. This is why Arabeyes exists, in case you haven't noticed. It provides an open forum for people to discuss such issues. We setup QAC specifically for this. You are still free to join the QAC and participate in forming such decisions.
I said in my post that I will discuss my issues here. Did you give time and found me not saying what are my issues? I also said I am not joing arabeyes team yet I standed to my right to contribute if I choose to. Fedora is an Open source project, it has the tools, the infrastructure and CVS. I do not need to be part of arabeyes if I need to so anything, or I must do that if that what you are refering to? Again it is you who pushing things far away and assume and over react. You exactly did the same thing the last time I tried to approach you guys.
Discussion about translation need to be here, I do not see why should a discussion should be disconnected from Fedora Project. I belive it has been stated that if 5 or more translators from certain lang are there, they can have their own mailing list. Why do we need to move to discuss anything on arabeyes if I may ask ?
to defence blindly first, attacking and talk in such a way far from being professional. Yet, everytime you
It takes two to tango.
I guess you just said I did not attack. So I am afraid you are to tango on your own. For me I do not have time for this.
greatly manage to make me regret to even do anything for the middle east or the arab ppl, or even think about translation.
That is your prerogative.
That's your done. Everytime I do something, you attack
Can you simply tell me now, without history talking, why are you attacking me here? Oh let me tell you:
- - Oh Sherif took the module to translate - - Oh Sherif has concerns aginst arabeyes - - Oh Sherif object to have Youcef a maintainer - - Oh Sherif released the module - - Oh what shall we do now! Let us give him hard time.
You accused me of playing game of taking, releasing, retaking, releasing the module. I would like to know where did you get that from. You went more claiming that I have ill-feeling, old memories about Arabeyes. Let me tell you, it is you who are assuming and building on that. I simple:
- - Tried to help - - Did learn there is someone working on it - - Rleased the module for him - - Stated that I have issues with the current translation - - Stated I will discuss it. - - Objected due to the above reason, and due to the behavior (which you still acting on).
I said I am going to discuss and rais the issues. You never discussed. You just attacked, accused me playing games ...etc. Get over it man!
I think it would help if you also think of Arabeyes as "The Arab Open Source Community". We are not a commercial entity. I know you didn't say that we were, but sometimes it is good to point it out.
Arab Eyes is a project. It is not the Arab Open Source Community. It is like Fedora, is not the Linux Open Source Community, but it s a project. I have was trying to help but you simply put things on my mouth and attacked me for your own twisted mind. Second time on a row you insits to attack before listen nor understand. And this time you made up something that I am taking leaving , taking the module trying to play games. What a twisted mind. There is no one would force me to leave this module if I insisted to translate it, you need to understand this. So do not make up a lie to satisfy you assumption that I am against arabeyes.
I think everyone can appreciate such effort. Unfortunately, just like with the current system at Fedora, it does not help -- kind of like a student who gets A for effort but fails the class anyway.
Did you wait and see if the student would fail ? Goodness get over your sick assumption.
[..] me with bull. I would appreciate if you forget about me
You make it hard to forget about you ;)
I will make sure to disapear from your screens so you forget me then. It is not funny and I am really sick and tired from this. Let me withdraw my objection on having anyone from Arabeyes to be the maintainer. Does that satisfy you?!!
I promise you once they open immegration for Mars I will apply to leave the planet for you so you can get over your old memories and forget about me!!
Once again, "claims" are a by-product, it is by no means a "mission". If you think you can put together a team and coordinate yourself, then great. We would then hope to be able to coordinate standards of translations together. It so happens that Arabeyes handles a handful of translation projects (among other things). So, coordinating with Arabeyes, whether you wish to go at it alone or with Arabeyes, is in Fedora's best interest.
As I said I am withdrawing my offer to help, and my objection. I will also not bother to proof reading or cheacking the translation. I will not raise any more flags that I have issues. Does that end this !! Goodness.
Yes, then withrdraw your objection and let us continue to do the work we have been doing since March 12, 2004.
Have fun .. continou whatever you want. I am out of here, and I withdraw being arabic speaking person as well as objecting to anything, satisfied ?
I hope now that you just ignore me, and act as if I am not there, I will make sure to double check anything I do, if I see arabeyes I will just walk away.
Do you want me to vote for Youcef as well to be maintainer or withdrawing my objection is enough for you!! Goodness.
I am outta here.
Thanks
Sherif
On Sat, Jun 26, 2004 at 03:04:28AM -0400, Sherif Abdelgawad wrote:
[..]
I think this thread has gotten a bit too dodgy. Let's start from scratch.
- From Groh's last post, I now understand that this is all in the process and all this is till being formed. Fair enough.
- You have certain issues with the translations themselves. Could you please explain what they are to us, so we can rectify them?
- You have certain issues with the way Arabeyes handles things (so far Arabeyes officially has not done anything, so I'm not sure what you are referring to -- but if you do have such issues, we would be happy to hear constructive criticism on the 'general' list).
It is obvious that you and I and everyone else is only interested in Arabic being properly supported. So I for one, will stop the arguing.
/me extends hand to shake on peace ;)
Regards
On Yaum al-Sabt 08 Jumaada al-Awal 1425 10:04 am, Sherif Abdelgawad wrote:
First let me state it clear from the begining. I am a member of Arabeyes.org and proud of their work in general. I thank them a lot and believe they have done and continue doing a great job. However, I disagree with them sometimes in the way they deal with matters and hence recording my voice here.
It is up to them, if they did not speak it is their problem. I am aware of at least 2 ppl objecting. Do not you think you better discuss how things should be and allow more somothely ppl to feel OK to join you rather than attacking?
Belive or not I don't have any contact with Mr Sherif and don't think I am one of these 2 ppl but you can count me as the #3 who records some objections. I feel this thread comes exactly at the right time ;)
I also said I am not joing arabeyes team yet I standed to my right to contribute if I choose to. Fedora is an Open source project, it has the tools, the infrastructure and CVS. I do not need to be part of arabeyes if I need
Agree 100% that it should be a recommendation or at least ask the translation teams not to impose any restriction, whatsoever, on others translation. Read on...
to so anything, or I must do that if that what you are refering to?
Yes, this in my opinion is a major problem.
Again it is you who pushing things far away and assume and over react. You exactly did the same thing the last time I tried to approach you guys.
Some days ago a very relevant discussion appeared here. I found very strange attitude towards our team work details.
Examples: http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/doc/2004/June/msg00192.html It's mentioned that: "I for one, again personally, don't like the setup that is being discussed (not due to any personnel involvement), but I simply don't think a reputable leading institute should engage in open source in this manner...Its now in the open that these people will be paid workers (and that is good for all to know to avoid any dancing). "
I believe translation teams should be flexible on how other teams want to work. I shouldn't be forced to reveal whether I am paid or not though nothing bad about it at all. Though this is his personal opinion but as a core member it affects a lot. Let's see...
On http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/doc/2004/June/msg00184.html It's also mentioned that: "I think you need to state outright who these people are, what arrangements have been made by whom and why, etc. The key is FULL transparency on all issues - the more everyone knows, the more everyone is comfortable. That is the open source way and as noted, the main aspect of our existence is "fostering a community""
I believe that if someone is only interested in translation not fostering your community, he should have the right to do it. To block/restrict others' translation becaue it doesn't help fostering your community is a type of .... Community could be built on love and peace not rules/restrictions.
On http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/doc/2004/June/msg00190.html It's mentions that: "The natural thing is to do it with the existing translation team -- this is how it works with all projects we are involved with. In this case, it happens to be Arabeyes. If someone wants to say, you know what, KDE's translation is crap, we will re-do the whole thing, there's nothing that can stop them. However, only Arabeyes' translations will be part of the official KDE release. I am only mentining KDE as an example, this would apply to all projects.... Arabeyes doesn't have a published mechanism of how to accept contributions from external institutes. We will hopefully come up with a scheme by the end of today's core meeting"
This shouldn't be the case at all. I should be able to contribute to any project I like if there are some restrictions applied to my contribution by whatever translation team. Again if arabeyes or any other translation team believes that only their translation would reach the specified project this would lead to serious problems regarding others who have problems with the basis of Arabeyes, and yes, Alan, sure there exist parties/persons with such issues.
Let's see now what's on the meeting. On http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/doc/2004/June/msg00210.html Alzubeir mentions that: "Although, after a long debate in core, there was a deadlock (2 - 2) of whether we should make this mandatory."
By mandatory he meant to say forcing other teams to register individually with each one have a separate account and not allowing them to contribute as a team with one account if they are willing to do it so for their own reasons. I believe this right should not be in teams hands.
Finally, I hope arabeyes would deal as expected with these message professionally and not count me as a wickid person.
Sirs, we have a team that is willing to translate Fedora remaing file which rather big. I just want to ask about the procedure and whehter you will release for me
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Munzir Taha wrote:
Sirs, we have a team that is willing to translate Fedora remaing file which
rather
big. I just want to ask about the procedure and whehter you will release
for
me
Welcome Munzir to the list. I am glade I had the chance to chat with you on IRC, glade also that there is a deticated team from KCAST (King AbdulAziz City for Science and Technology) welling to contribute in Fedora.
I belive this should be the second team after Arabeyes. I am aware of a small team also would like to join.
As this is becoming more of how to organize work to a specific Arabic translation, I would ask again Sarah to get us separate list to sort out policies and start putting tasks without flooding this mailing list with arabic specific issues.
Arabeyes had 89% done. Only one file still to be translated. I guess you mentioned you have team of 4 or 5 plus yourself, one of them is the the maintainer of the KCAST fonts used in fedora, so I guess it is good step to have you guys contributing.
Youcef is the person now assigned the module which need to be translated. Youcef has mentioned that he will not contiou translating till all the issues/requests are solved. I guess if you are welling to work till this is done, you may request from Youcef to release the module for yourself.
For now you will need to setup account to do, do you have one yet?
Sarah, when can we have fedora-trans-ar ?
Thanks
Sherif
On Yaum al-Ahad 09 Jumaada al-Awal 1425 08:23 am, Sherif Abdelgawad wrote:
Welcome Munzir to the list. I am glade I had the chance to chat with you on IRC,
me too.
Arabeyes had 89% done. Only one file still to be translated. I guess you mentioned you have team of 4 or 5 plus yourself, one of them is the the maintainer of the KCAST fonts used in fedora, so I guess it is good step to have you guys contributing.
I am sure we can do a good translation to this file.
Youcef is the person now assigned the module which need to be translated. Youcef has mentioned that he will not contiou translating till all the issues/requests are solved. I guess if you are welling to work till this is done, you may request from Youcef to release the module for yourself.
Yes, I am willing to take this file and finish it. Yousef, will you please release that file for us. Let us finish it and then we would discuss quality assurance issues together.
For now you will need to setup account to do, do you have one yet?
I filled the form but haven't received a confirmation yet.
Also waiting for the fedora-trans-list confirmation.
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Disclaimer: Whatever stated here is my own view and openion, has nothing to do with TE Data or Linux-Egypt.
I have just followed the discussions on this mailing list, and wondered of the heat of the discussion, which made me hesitate whether I should contribute or not.
Just I have a small thing to say, Arabs are part of the Open Source movement, wouldn't it be better to give the chance to every Arabian Open Source contributor to work with the community at large directly, and be part of it ?? I believe it will give them more experience, also it will help correct some of the misunderstanding from others towards Arabs, well, won't talk politics here, never.
Just my two cents.
Regards Mohamed Eldesoky
On Sunday 27 June 2004 6:08 pm, Munzir Taha wrote:
On Yaum al-Ahad 09 Jumaada al-Awal 1425 08:23 am, Sherif Abdelgawad wrote:
Welcome Munzir to the list. I am glade I had the chance to chat with you on IRC,
me too.
Arabeyes had 89% done. Only one file still to be translated. I guess you mentioned you have team of 4 or 5 plus yourself, one of them is the the maintainer of the KCAST fonts used in fedora, so I guess it is good step to have you guys contributing.
I am sure we can do a good translation to this file.
Youcef is the person now assigned the module which need to be translated. Youcef has mentioned that he will not contiou translating till all the issues/requests are solved. I guess if you are welling to work till this is done, you may request from Youcef to release the module for yourself.
Yes, I am willing to take this file and finish it. Yousef, will you please release that file for us. Let us finish it and then we would discuss quality assurance issues together.
For now you will need to setup account to do, do you have one yet?
I filled the form but haven't received a confirmation yet.
Also waiting for the fedora-trans-list confirmation.
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On Sunday 27 June 2004 17:08, Munzir Taha wrote:
[...]
Yousef, will you please release that file for us.
[...]
As you can't commit yet to Fedora CVS, I think releasing it will not resolve the issue and will make you loose more precious time and money. You can:
1- Translate it and email it to me and I'll commit it.
or
2- Work directly on Arabeyes CVS (it's sync'ed) (since you and every other every member of the new KACST team have access to Arabeyes CVS anyway).
- -- Youcef R. Rahal Arabeyes.org http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal
在2004年06月28日的01:08，Munzir Taha写道：
I filled the form but haven't received a confirmation yet.
Your account has been approved and you should have received the confirmation email with your cvs access and login information. Please let me know if you haven't received confirmation email.
Also waiting for the fedora-trans-list confirmation.
You are on the list now, aren't you? :)
Sarah
On Yaum al-Ithnain 10 Jumaada al-Awal 1425 11:43 am, Sarah Wang wrote:
在2004年06月28日的01:08，Munzir Taha写道：
I filled the form but haven't received a confirmation yet.
Your account has been approved and you should have received the confirmation email with your cvs access and login information. Please let me know if you haven't received confirmation email.
Also waiting for the fedora-trans-list confirmation.
You are on the list now, aren't you? :)
Thanks every thing is Ok now. I checked out and it's OK. Just I don't know where are the member pages for which I need the login and pin #. Any help please?
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 10:54:27PM -0700, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
Then why are you replying? ;) I think we all want to get this done in the best way it can be for Arabic.
I think this argument illustrates the problem from the Fedora/Red Hat viewpoint nicely. When someone contributes it is generally a good thing. At the same time if there is a large community accepted project currently doing the translation it is a good thing if that community is doing all the work and keeping it consistent.
However
- Our translation admins don't have a perfect knowledge of all translation teams - Some of them are split by bitter long running disputes so there is no right answer - Language teams have a habit of appearing *after* someone has done the first 99% of the translations
All this would probably be perfectly harmless except that to some groups of people language, it's style, and "correctness" by some definition is an incredibly important issue either for social, religious or political reasons.
The second problem here is I suspect a cultural difference - while the Arabic translators may be used to trading essays with references a lot of Westerners tend not to bother to read long things but like concise short arguments.
Having read those long posts I do not see why the new translation tools are being blamed. They happened to come into existance at the same time as the problem but that is all. The underlying problem appears to be that there is a generally recognized project for Arabic translation and Fedora doesn't currently reflect that - or other similar situations where there is a clear project.
Where there is not a clear group or where that group is small enough that everyone really does know everyone else (as for example in the Welsh translation group) the new system works well and helps.
Is the real solution in the case of translations with an established team, actively translating Fedora simply to point all new signups for Arabic to the Arabeyes project ? Or are there groups of Arabic translators who have problems with the basis of Arabeyes ?
Alan
On Sat, Jun 26, 2004 at 10:09:08AM -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
[..]
- Language teams have a habit of appearing *after* someone has done the first 99% of the translations
That may be the case -- but it hasn't been in our experience. When we first took over the Fedora translation, we had a total of 5 translated strings out of 10664 [1]. Today, we stand at 89% [2], with the disputed dist.po being the only file that is not at 100%. I am not sure what has been sync'ed back to Fedora's CVS so far, but we have obviously suspended translations until we figure out where we stand.
The second problem here is I suspect a cultural difference - while the Arabic translators may be used to trading essays with references a lot of Westerners tend not to bother to read long things but like concise short arguments.
I usually write short to-the-point posts, but I felt it was necessary to give a background to those who are not familiar with Arabeyes' work, in order to be able to appreciate the magnitude of the issue (to us).
Having read those long posts I do not see why the new translation tools are being blamed. They happened to come into existance at the same time as the problem but that is all. The underlying problem appears to be that there is a generally recognized project for Arabic translation and Fedora doesn't currently reflect that - or other similar situations where there is a clear project.
Right on target. The system was misunderstood (apparently by more than just us).
[..]
Is the real solution in the case of translations with an established team, actively translating Fedora simply to point all new signups for Arabic to the Arabeyes project ? Or are there groups of Arabic translators who have problems with the basis of Arabeyes ?
Another question would be, what can be done when there is another group of translators objecting to the pre-existing one, which has been doing the vast majority of the work?
References: [1] http://www.arabeyes.org/~elzubeir/fedora_begin_status.html [2] http://www.arabeyes.org/misc/fedora_status_bar.html
Regards,
Mohammad,
Will all my respect for you and the Arabeyes project, but this thread is getting more and more frustrating. First Yousef starts bombarding the list about what he has been misunderstanding for a very long time, and then you show up and keep doing the same thing.
I think it's important to understand that you are contributing to the Fedora project, and you *have to* play with their rules. It's not important to most of the people here that what is Arabeyes or how does it manage its tasks.
I'm writing this, because I think the responses have been unfair to Red Hat here. The little change they as the sponsors of the site did was that now people can lock the file they are translating, and any body can see that it only adds mutual exclusion to the system, which is much welcome, with almost no drawback; and you go on and elaborate on how this change breaks team work, consistency, management, Iraq war, Palestinian war, US/Iran relationship, blah blah blah...
I don't like this attitude :(.
behdad (who do not speak Arabic;)
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
On Sat, Jun 26, 2004 at 10:09:08AM -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
[..]
- Language teams have a habit of appearing *after* someone has done the first 99% of the translations
That may be the case -- but it hasn't been in our experience. When we first took over the Fedora translation, we had a total of 5 translated strings out of 10664 [1]. Today, we stand at 89% [2], with the disputed dist.po being the only file that is not at 100%. I am not sure what has been sync'ed back to Fedora's CVS so far, but we have obviously suspended translations until we figure out where we stand.
The second problem here is I suspect a cultural difference - while the Arabic translators may be used to trading essays with references a lot of Westerners tend not to bother to read long things but like concise short arguments.
I usually write short to-the-point posts, but I felt it was necessary to give a background to those who are not familiar with Arabeyes' work, in order to be able to appreciate the magnitude of the issue (to us).
Having read those long posts I do not see why the new translation tools are being blamed. They happened to come into existance at the same time as the problem but that is all. The underlying problem appears to be that there is a generally recognized project for Arabic translation and Fedora doesn't currently reflect that - or other similar situations where there is a clear project.
Right on target. The system was misunderstood (apparently by more than just us).
[..]
Is the real solution in the case of translations with an established team, actively translating Fedora simply to point all new signups for Arabic to the Arabeyes project ? Or are there groups of Arabic translators who have problems with the basis of Arabeyes ?
Another question would be, what can be done when there is another group of translators objecting to the pre-existing one, which has been doing the vast majority of the work?
References: [1] http://www.arabeyes.org/~elzubeir/fedora_begin_status.html [2] http://www.arabeyes.org/misc/fedora_status_bar.html
Regards,
--behdad behdad.org
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Behdad,
On Saturday 26 June 2004 22:02, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
Mohammad,
Will all my respect for you and the Arabeyes project, but this thread is getting more and more frustrating. First Yousef starts bombarding the list about what he has been misunderstanding for a very long time, and then you show up and keep doing the same thing.
No comment...
I think it's important to understand that you are contributing to the Fedora project, and you *have to* play with their rules. It's not important to most of the people here that what is Arabeyes or how does it manage its tasks.
Behdad, are you ignoring all other posts from other translators from various languages, or ???
I'm writing this, because I think the responses have been unfair to Red Hat here. The little change they as the sponsors of the site did was that now people can lock the file they are translating, and any body can see that it only adds mutual exclusion to the system, which is much welcome, with almost no drawback; and you go on and elaborate on how this change breaks team work, consistency, management, Iraq war, Palestinian war, US/Iran relationship, blah blah blah...
It's not only the [Take]/[Release] mechanism that is being questioned. If this mechanism is used in an organized way, then OK. But, it's the policy of Fedora vis a vis new comers when there are already teams in place that's not clear.
I believe that new comers should be asked to join the current teams. If they don't want to, they should object publicly and give valid reasons. If they say the maintainer in place is not good, they should also object publicly and give valid reasons ('usually' people are put in jail after a trial in which accusators and witnesses are _not anonymous_, and for 'valid' reasons). BTW, I am not aware of any case where a team rejected a new translator from joining. On the contrary, translation teams are usually in dire need for help, and that's due essentially to the fact that translation is intrinsicly difficult (and partly 'boring').
So, that is the main problem. And it's not specific to Arabic. This issue rouse after the answers to many posts after the announcement of the new system. There have been disclaimers, right. Then, it would be good to know what is/will be the _official_ policy of Fedora for this issue ??? Also, who does take such decisions ? When ? Who makes the choice for languages maintainership ?
I don't like this attitude :(.
Well. We are concerned about the framework in which we'll translate if we are to continue to translate. There have been/is a big problem for the Arabic maintainership, OK. But as long as the policy keeps to be as unclear as it is now, as long as the new framework is being implemented without taking considertion of what other Translation Projects successfully did, I have a feeling this will happen again with other languages in the future and will keep alienating people who have been translating for a long time.
What we are asking for are clear answers to those important questions. And if possible, in an 'official' way (rather than an answer with a disclaimer and with 'IMOs'). Such answers will definitely close the debate rather then seeing this thread degenerating more and more. Enough precious time (for all the parties) has been lost.
behdad (who do not speak Arabic;)
Regards,
- -- Youcef R. Rahal Arabeyes.org http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
Another question would be, what can be done when there is another group of translators objecting to the pre-existing one, which has been doing the vast majority of the work?
Mohammed, You know as well as I know that Linux is growing in Middle East and you just can not make all people unified or be in one side. As far as I know there are 2 people who shared objection with me. So if they did not talk publicly and object here I think you should get what you asked for. I personally feel OK after the emails we had and the point we reached, and have no problem to assign the arabic translation to Arabeyes.
Thanks
Sherif
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, Alan Cox wrote:
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 10:54:27PM -0700, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
All this would probably be perfectly harmless except that to some groups of people language, it's style, and "correctness" by some definition is an incredibly important issue either for social, religious or political reasons.
That is my point and concern which I wanted to discuss with Arabeyes and I will.
The second problem here is I suspect a cultural difference - while the Arabic translators may be used to trading essays with references a lot of Westerners tend not to bother to read long things but like concise short arguments.
Right point.
Having read those long posts I do not see why the new translation tools are being blamed. They happened to come into existance at the same time as the problem but that is all. The underlying problem appears to be that there is a generally recognized project for Arabic translation and Fedora doesn't currently reflect that - or other similar situations where there is a clear project.
You are right on that as well.
Is the real solution in the case of translations with an established team, actively translating Fedora simply to point all new signups for Arabic to the Arabeyes project ? Or are there groups of Arabic translators who have problems with the basis of Arabeyes ?
I had my arugment over here, have problem with assigning the project to Arabeyes after we reach a point where we can talk. There are another group of ppl that if they did not choose to talk here I think Arabeyes deserve to get it assigned. Sarah said she will setup ar mailing list, and having herself the maintainer till the group agree and elect someone. I would say if there is no one else object here (at least come forward and announce objection), and with the last emails I had with Mr. Elzubeir as we reached a point where we can work things out, so if there is no other one choose to discuss publicly his objection, I think Arabeyes should be maintaing it.
Thanks
Sherif
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Hi,
Mohammed has already answered this post, I'd like to stress on some points though.
On Saturday 26 June 2004 16:09, Alan Cox wrote:
[...]
However
- Our translation admins don't have a perfect knowledge of all translation teams
Actually, they... <cough>should</cough> ;)
Sorry to give examples from the 'outside' again, but as many other translators stressed on the fact that a comparaison has to be made, I'll do it :-)
In one concrete example, Mandrake, there's a l10n coordinator, who seems to be aware of _all_ teams and their coordinators. When I post to their mailing list, I'm 'recognized' at once though, believe me, I posted far less on Mandrake's lists than on Fedora's. When a new comer posts to the list, he/she is immediately asked to join a team if any (or the team coordinator usually answers directly) and I don't have any memory where things went bad (people refusing or something like that). I have never had to say I am the coordinator of Arabic translation, to say we started translation on X date, we translated Y strings and we committed Z times... Part of the exchanges on the recent thread were due to translation admins not knowing some facts.
[...]
- Language teams have a habit of appearing *after* someone has done the first 99% of the translations
At least for Fedora it's not the case. I can again give the example of Mandrake, being translated by Arabeyes (I am coordinating the translation...). Actually we 'appeared' after a good deal of translation was made, by people who wasn't organized in a team. The work has been stalled for some time and thus we asked for maintainership. We could have taken all the credit since the translation page of Mandrake makes no mention of any previous translators (exept that Arabeyes is the coordinator), no ?:
http://www1.mandrakelinux.com/l10n/ar.php3
However, we were very keen to give credit to the previous translators:
http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Mandrake (see 'Notes').
And their names are in the PO headers too.
About the credits: it's not only important to give people credit for their 'donations' (the donations here are 'hours of participation and dedication'), but also you have a reference to point to in case of an issue. When and end-user finds a 'bug' (vocabulary, grammar, or... worse !) in translation, you can always refer them to the people who did it. When there's a (known) team, it's even better. Rather than being obliged to say: 'Ooops, actually, we have no idea who did what...'.
[...]
The second problem here is I suspect a cultural difference - while the Arabic translators may be used to trading essays with references a lot of Westerners tend not to bother to read long things but like concise short arguments.
As far as I can say, I try to email 'short' posts with clear questions ;-) However, my/our questions (until now) are simply being ignored by the translation admins. Again, answering them clearly would save to all of us 'hours' of precious time.
[...]
Best regards,
- -- Youcef R. Rahal Arabeyes.org http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal
On Sun, Jun 27, 2004 at 06:26:15AM +0200, Youcef Rabah Rahal wrote:
In one concrete example, Mandrake, there's a l10n coordinator, who seems to be aware of _all_ teams and their coordinators. When I post to their mailing
Thats impressive.
- Language teams have a habit of appearing *after* someone has done the first 99% of the translations
At least for Fedora it's not the case. I can again give the example of
not the case for Arabic...
However, we were very keen to give credit to the previous translators: http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Mandrake (see 'Notes'). And their names are in the PO headers too.
Thats really good and important.
About the credits: it's not only important to give people credit for their 'donations' (the donations here are 'hours of participation and dedication'), but also you have a reference to point to in case of an issue. When and end-user finds a 'bug' (vocabulary, grammar, or... worse !) in translation, you can always refer them to the people who did it. When there's a (known) team, it's even better. Rather than being obliged to say: 'Ooops, actually, we have no idea who did what...'.
Agreed entirely
Fwd'ing Munzir email to the list, as he still not confirmed to be able to send here.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Munzir Taha" munzirtaha@newhorizons.com.sa To: "Sherif Abdelgawad" sabdelg@redhat.com Cc: "Documentation and Translation" doc@arabeyes.org; "Fedora Translation Project List" fedora-trans-list@redhat.com; alkanhal@kacst.edu.sa Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 8:08 AM Subject: Re: Fedora and Translation Teams
On Yaum al-Ahad 09 Jumaada al-Awal 1425 08:23 am, Sherif Abdelgawad
wrote:
Welcome Munzir to the list. I am glade I had the chance to chat with you on IRC,
me too.
Arabeyes had 89% done. Only one file still to be translated. I guess you mentioned you have team of 4 or 5 plus yourself, one of them is the the maintainer of the KCAST fonts used in fedora, so I guess it is good step to have you guys contributing.
I am sure we can do a good translation to this file.
Youcef is the person now assigned the module which need to be translated. Youcef has mentioned that he will not contiou translating till all the issues/requests are solved. I guess if you are welling to work till this is done, you may request from Youcef to release the module for yourself.
Yes, I am willing to take this file and finish it. Yousef, will you
please
release that file for us. Let us finish it and then we would discuss
quality
assurance issues together.
For now you will need to setup account to do, do you have one yet?
I filled the form but haven't received a confirmation yet.
Also waiting for the fedora-trans-list confirmation.
-- Munzir Taha PGP Key available gpg --recv-keys --keyserver www.mandrakesecure.net F0671821
Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer Linux Registered User #279362 at http://counter.li.org Mandrake Club member Maintainer of the Open Arabic Bugs Project at http://wiki.arabeyes.org/OpenBugs CIW Designer, ICDL, MOUS New Horizons CLC Riyadh, SA
fre 2004-06-25 klockan 19.18 skrev Sherif Abdelgwad:
First, I am just a stating *my own* openion here and it is not *fedora* openion or redhat.
Certainly. I believe everyone here is aware that people are usually speaking for themselves, without any particular hat on, unless otherwise stated.
I am getting confused and lost in the long emails. Can Mohamed or Youcef please explain in short email, in points : what are the problems as I failed to follow all long emails here. I do not see any changes in the policys, the only thing happened was to prevent multiple translators committing changes at same time.
I think reading the long detailed mails is a good thing; they explain quite a lot of background, which the heated flamage mails don't.
Anyway, I think everyone agrees that avoiding translation conflicts is a good thing. It's not really that which is causing the debate. The point is in *which way* this is achieved. Traditionally, translation projects are communities where volunteers join seperate language teams to produce translations, and in this work the teams naturally also arrange these issues for themselves and arrange who works on what and so on.
In Fedora, language teams are right now bypassed completely by the organization, so that each contributor by default just works for himself or herself, thus eliminating all benefits of teams. Teams are not mandated nor encouraged by the process, which many experienced translators seem to believe is a serious mistake.
I went through Mohamed email and I am not sure where all these issues came from?
I belive that by people establish teams here, things will be start to shape and take better form. Let me ask first, when Arabeyes started translation, did they have full list of things how it should be? Things are still being built and taking final shape. I belive in the freedom of allowing people to contribute.
Certainly, so do we all. The key issue here is: when would the teams take shape, and what would those teams look like? With the new Fedora translation status pages, where anyone can contribute without ever discussing anything with anyone else, the concept of teams aren't mandated nor even encouraged.
Allowing anyone to contribute right away without discussing with anyone may sound like a nice idea in theory, but it is usually in practice totally orthogonal to the idea of producing coherent, good quality translations. To have that, one must first cooperate. There's no magic way around that. And to get that, you must first mandate or at least encourage volunteering translators to join teams.
Also, there's no way for someone else not fluent in the language to decide whether particular translations are good or bad. Thus, you usually have to ask the translators for that language as a group to have that question answered. That means teams. So no matter how you design your translation organization, you usually can't get around the concept of teams, at least not if you care squat about quality assurance.
Thus the heated debate: The concept of community translations of Red Hat Linux or Fedora Core is not new, so there are long-time contributors that have already formed successful language translation teams for many years, producing 100% complete translations for [insert divinity] knows how many releases. Some of those teams are large, some teams are smaller, but they are usually all quite experienced. Enter today where these existing teams are suddenly completely nullified by the Fedora translation status pages, which ignore them completely. Then perhaps you can understand why people are annoyed, when they have the successful teams they've built up and contributed with in the past now being completely ignored.
Granted, these existing Red Hat/Fedora community language translation teams weren't really tracked before. They weren't really official; Red Hat just tracked individual contributors and hoped that these should organize themselves some way. Which is also what happened. Unofficial language teams were formed out of registered community translators, and were successful in producing Red Hat translations and later Fedora translations. So, would we be again at that point in time at the birth of the project, I would agree with you that we would just need to wait and see translation teams form.
But we aren't. For many languages, there is already organized and successful teams that have already been dealing with this for many years. Bypassing and ignoring the existance of them, be it accidentally or intentionally, is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The main goal I see here is to provide traslation. Is the translation provided by certain people will be final and for good? I doubt! To establish a translation first is the first step. I belive yet to come a lot of tuning and enhancement.
Certainly. It's just that to have help and feedback from other translators they must know about your work and be able to review it, preferrably in good time. With the current system, some random person could commit a babelfish-quality translation without other translators fluent in the language (the "team") knowing about it or catching it in time.
I am not aginst keeping things the same across all modules, and similar to other translations. For sure will be great to have team like Arabeyes team to contribute. Yet, why assuming anyone else who would like to contribute would cause a mess because s/he decided not to be part of Arabeyes.
I can't speak for Arabeyes, but there's nothing magic about most teams. They're not a secret, closed band of elitist people. Usually they're quite informal. All it takes to become a "member" of a language team is often a discussion like this on a language team mailing list:
A: Hi, I want to translate the X module into LL! B: Sure, go ahead. We will note in this LL team that you're doing the X translation. Please ask if you have any questions and also consider subscribing to our mailing list if you haven't already. Also, once you're finished, please send your translation to the mailing list so others can try to review it and give helpful comments. A: Gee, thanks, will do.
If the situation was that all teams were closed gangs of self-selected arrogant people that perhaps rejected new volunteers or demanded them to work on stuff they didn't like to, then I would understand your point that there should perhaps be a way for volunteers to decide not to be part of a team to participate.
This almost always isn't the situation though. The teams are usually as informal as could possibly be. They're there so that volunteer translators for that language know each other and who's working on what in the project, and can help eachother and review each other's work, and as a consequence in the end as a team produce coherent translations for that language.
Thus, I don't understand at all what the benefit would be of deciding not to join a team, or why the system should encourage that or even have that as an option. If there's a particular team that isn't as open or helpful as could be to new volunteers, then it's a problem with that particular language team, not the concept of language teams per se.
So, to keep this discussion constructive, can we discuss here what are the requirment or the right way someone think the system should be ? I had hard time to get clear requirment or request. I only found hey this policy is no good, why this should be this way. It would be better to be hey why do not we have things this way.
If you ask for my opinion, something like the model used in almost all other translation projects is the way to go. See my "The GNOME model" mail which explains how such translation projects often work.
Perhaps not every little detail should be copied, since even those systems have their problems in details, but an organization fundamentally built on teams is a must, and also that the system encourages or mandates that volunteers join the teams first before committing translations. If you don't have that, you scrap all the benefits of having the teams in the first place.
Also, each team having a coordinator is often a must. Perhaps you can live without a team coordinator if the team is only two people, but if the teams grow larger you often need it. Then you can have someone that has the final say, should there be an issue in the team where there needs to be someone that has the final say. Usually this is not the case, but should there be such a situation the team will often be able to resolve the issues themselves if there has been a coordinator assigned in the team. Otherwise the translation project maintainer may need to step in and decide on an issue he or she couldn't possibly make a qualified decision on, because it involves knowledge of the particular language. And if the team is unhappy with the team coordinator, the coordinator can always be replaced. Also, occasionally you will want to get in contact with a team, and if you have assigned a coordinator, you have an excellent contact person aswell.
I hope this mail was helpful, even if it was long. Translation itself isn't rocket science, but it often scales into a very large project with many volunteers quite rapidly. And dealing with how to best organize those large amounts of volunteers so that they can cooperate in the best way possible and produce coherent translations is a nontrivial task, from which lessons have been learned in the past in other free software translation projects. We should learn from those lessons.
Christian
Christian,
First, I am just a stating *my own* openion here and it is not *fedora* openion or redhat.
Certainly. I believe everyone here is aware that people are usually speaking for themselves, without any particular hat on, unless otherwise stated.
Why then did the email from arabeyes talk about fedora policies, though they really only talked about what *I* said? I believe this disclaimer of Sherif was necessary, otherwise, we might have gotten a reply about additional fedora policies, that aren't really any fedora policies, or would you disagree?
I am getting confused and lost in the long emails. Can Mohamed or Youcef please explain in short email, in points : what are the problems as I failed to follow all long emails here. I do not see any changes in the policys, the only thing happened was to prevent multiple translators committing changes at same time.
I think reading the long detailed mails is a good thing; they explain quite a lot of background, which the heated flamage mails don't.
Anyway, I think everyone agrees that avoiding translation conflicts is a good thing. It's not really that which is causing the debate. The point is in *which way* this is achieved. Traditionally, translation projects are communities where volunteers join seperate language teams to produce translations, and in this work the teams naturally also arrange these issues for themselves and arrange who works on what and so on.
Agreed, and this is a good thing.
In Fedora, language teams are right now bypassed completely by the organization, so that each contributor by default just works for himself or herself, thus eliminating all benefits of teams. Teams are not mandated nor encouraged by the process, which many experienced translators seem to believe is a serious mistake.
Maybe it was a mistake to put the new system online, maybe we should go back to the previous one, in which everyone can commit again at any time? Would you prefer that? This issue is open for discussion. There's still a lot of work to do I believe, I merely thought the new system was a step into the right direction. If it's not, let's fix it, there's no need to suddenly jump up and say that other people shouldn't have a module assigned to them, because they've got nothing to do with the translation group in place. Before, they didn't have a module assigned to them, but simply did a commit. You don't think it's a step into the right direction if you can now see who's doing what? Ok, understood. Maybe we were wrong. Are there other opinions?
I went through Mohamed email and I am not sure where all these issues came from?
I belive that by people establish teams here, things will be start to shape and take better form. Let me ask first, when Arabeyes started translation, did they have full list of things how it should be? Things are still being built and taking final shape. I belive in the freedom of allowing people to contribute.
Certainly, so do we all. The key issue here is: when would the teams take shape, and what would those teams look like?
Hang on, aren't you part of the community too? Isn't it as much up to you to form such teams as it is up to me? Or do you believe it is RedHat's responsibility to mandate teams? What would these teams look like? I don't know, what do you want your team to look like? Or do you believe it is RedHat's responsibility to define what exactly a team is? There are teams in place, and as said, that's why I've added the option of becoming a maintainer, so that people who have coordinated a certain language since ages, can actually prevent somebody else from commiting. A maintainer can release a module and give it to someone s/he trusts. In effect, the new system allows to give some level of control to existing translation teams, rather than letting everyone commit freely (no, that wasn't a requested feature, I've added this feature myself, so I could ensure that existing coordinators, being assigned as maintainer, can still commit, even though someone else took the module). I'm sorry to hear that you don't think that's a step into the right direction. Well, maybe we didn't think the new additions through enough? If so, I personally apologise for the inconvenience this has caused, though I actually only implemented what was requested. And no, I don't have the URL, since I didn't actually read those requests myself, I merely took on what the maintainers of some of the mailing lists for the individual languages told me was a common request.
With the new Fedora translation status pages, where anyone can contribute without ever discussing anything with anyone else, the concept of teams aren't mandated nor even encouraged.
Wasn't that also the case before the new status pages? Everyone could simply do a commit, without ever talking to anyone. Why are the arguments specifically against the new status pages? And really, if the majority of the community agrees with you, I have absolutely no objections of getting rid of them again.
Allowing anyone to contribute right away without discussing with anyone may sound like a nice idea in theory, but it is usually in practice totally orthogonal to the idea of producing coherent, good quality translations. To have that, one must first cooperate. There's no magic way around that. And to get that, you must first mandate or at least encourage volunteering translators to join teams.
Agreed, with the exception of the mandate. But why should it be entirely up to "us"? Isn't it the responsibility of each individual within the community to encourage people to join teams? Why should "we" *make* people join certain teams? And while I agree with what you're saying, I still believe that an understandable translation is better than none, and you can start throwing stones at me now, if you wish. Ok, now, again, what exactly about the new status pages is it that causes all these problems? As said, I have no objections towards rolling them back and allowing everyone to commit again, at any given time.
Also, there's no way for someone else not fluent in the language to decide whether particular translations are good or bad. Thus, you usually have to ask the translators for that language as a group to have that question answered. That means teams. So no matter how you design your translation organization, you usually can't get around the concept of teams, at least not if you care squat about quality assurance.
Completely agree. I believe teamwork is very essential, and I'd encourage anyone to join an existing team, if exists.
Thus the heated debate: The concept of community translations of Red Hat Linux or Fedora Core is not new, so there are long-time contributors that have already formed successful language translation teams for many years, producing 100% complete translations for [insert divinity] knows how many releases. Some of those teams are large, some teams are smaller, but they are usually all quite experienced. Enter today where these existing teams are suddenly completely nullified by the Fedora translation status pages, which ignore them completely.
I'm sorry, but I don't see it? Why do the status pages nullify existing teams? If you chose to be a maintainer (and I've offered it to you), you're actually able to release someone from a module and get someone else to take it, or you can just take it yourself. Before, you had no way of doing that, and everyone could just freely commit, whether you wanted it or not. Please Christian, please explain to me why the new status pages nullify existing teams? I'd really like to know.
Then perhaps you can understand why people are annoyed, when they have the successful teams they've built up and contributed with in the past now being completely ignored.
Christian, I've offered you to be the maintainer for all swedish modules -- no reply. I'm happy to make Josep the maintainer for all modules for Catalan. I know he's asked, but then he said he'd want to wait till I tell him what he's messing with, so I told him. And I haven't heard anything since. Yes, it should be stated somewhere on the page, yes, we really should have team pages up, yes, this and that should be in place too, sorry if things aren't up as fast as you'd like them, we're really trying. Maybe starting with the status pages send the wrong message, if so, I apologise. And if you were hinting towards Youcef, I'm happy to discuss it with you off list, or on Youcef's request on list. But, if there are no objections from the other arabic translators, I have no objections either. One question though, why exactly did you get annoyed? Why exactly do you think it is all the fault of the new status pages? What is it about the new status pages that makes this system so infinitly worse than the one that was in place before? I'd really like to hear your take on it. Why is it, that it nullifies existing teams?
Granted, these existing Red Hat/Fedora community language translation teams weren't really tracked before. They weren't really official; Red Hat just tracked individual contributors and hoped that these should organize themselves some way. Which is also what happened. Unofficial language teams were formed out of registered community translators, and were successful in producing Red Hat translations and later Fedora translations. So, would we be again at that point in time at the birth of the project, I would agree with you that we would just need to wait and see translation teams form.
But we're not.
But we aren't. For many languages, there is already organized and successful teams that have already been dealing with this for many years. Bypassing and ignoring the existance of them, be it accidentally or intentionally, is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I'm sure I sound like a broken record by now, but again, why do you think that the new status pages bypass and ignore the existance of already organized language teams? And for the case I haven't made myself clear enough in previous emails, the system is open for discussion. And as said before also, if the majority of the community supports your view, I don't even have any objections of rolling it back, and allowing unrestricted commit access again. I can't promise anything though, after all, it's not up to me alone to decide, but I'd definitely speak for whatever the majority of the community wants.
The main goal I see here is to provide traslation. Is the translation provided by certain people will be final and for good? I doubt! To establish a translation first is the first step. I belive yet to come a lot of tuning and enhancement.
Certainly. It's just that to have help and feedback from other translators they must know about your work and be able to review it, preferrably in good time. With the current system, some random person could commit a babelfish-quality translation without other translators fluent in the language (the "team") knowing about it or catching it in time.
Hmm, now you've lost me completely. :( How is that different from how it was before? Everyone could do a commit. Now, on the other hand, if you are a maintainer, and somebody else does a commit, you'll even be notified by email. And you keep telling me it's all the new status pages? Sorry, but I just don't get it?! :(
I can't speak for Arabeyes, but there's nothing magic about most teams. They're not a secret, closed band of elitist people. Usually they're quite informal. All it takes to become a "member" of a language team is often a discussion like this on a language team mailing list:
A: Hi, I want to translate the X module into LL! B: Sure, go ahead. We will note in this LL team that you're doing the X translation. Please ask if you have any questions and also consider subscribing to our mailing list if you haven't already. Also, once you're finished, please send your translation to the mailing list so others can try to review it and give helpful comments. A: Gee, thanks, will do.If the situation was that all teams were closed gangs of self-selected arrogant people that perhaps rejected new volunteers or demanded them to work on stuff they didn't like to, then I would understand your point that there should perhaps be a way for volunteers to decide not to be part of a team to participate.
This almost always isn't the situation though. The teams are usually as informal as could possibly be. They're there so that volunteer translators for that language know each other and who's working on what in the project, and can help eachother and review each other's work, and as a consequence in the end as a team produce coherent translations for that language.
And you won't see me disagree with you, not in the least. It is true though, that sometimes, it's really hard to find a maintainer. ;) That however, I wouldn't in the least hold against teams. I believe having teams is a good thing.
Thus, I don't understand at all what the benefit would be of deciding not to join a team, or why the system should encourage that or even have that as an option. If there's a particular team that isn't as open or helpful as could be to new volunteers, then it's a problem with that particular language team, not the concept of language teams per se.
In general, of course I agree with you, that doesn't mean there couldn't be exceptions though. And I believe we can leave it at that. I'm happy to discuss it though.
If you ask for my opinion, something like the model used in almost all other translation projects is the way to go. See my "The GNOME model" mail which explains how such translation projects often work.
Perhaps not every little detail should be copied, since even those systems have their problems in details, but an organization fundamentally built on teams is a must, and also that the system encourages or mandates that volunteers join the teams first before committing translations. If you don't have that, you scrap all the benefits of having the teams in the first place.
Also, each team having a coordinator is often a must. Perhaps you can live without a team coordinator if the team is only two people, but if the teams grow larger you often need it. Then you can have someone that has the final say, should there be an issue in the team where there needs to be someone that has the final say. Usually this is not the case, but should there be such a situation the team will often be able to resolve the issues themselves if there has been a coordinator assigned in the team. Otherwise the translation project maintainer may need to step in and decide on an issue he or she couldn't possibly make a qualified decision on, because it involves knowledge of the particular language. And if the team is unhappy with the team coordinator, the coordinator can always be replaced. Also, occasionally you will want to get in contact with a team, and if you have assigned a coordinator, you have an excellent contact person aswell.
I hope this mail was helpful, even if it was long. Translation itself isn't rocket science, but it often scales into a very large project with many volunteers quite rapidly. And dealing with how to best organize those large amounts of volunteers so that they can cooperate in the best way possible and produce coherent translations is a nontrivial task, from which lessons have been learned in the past in other free software translation projects. We should learn from those lessons.
Christian, all these point are very well taken, believe me. I see a lot of problems with our current system, especially since we don't have everything in place that we'd like to have in place. We'd like to see language-specific mailing lists and team pages for all teams too, we just haven't gotten around to it yet. It would be nice to have it all centralized in one place, and that's the main aim, but for now, individual groups just have to have their own pages. Geez, in the beginning we even pointed to a non-fedora site for status information. So we've started with putting up a status page. Since the problem of concurrent commits and therefore conflicts in large and active groups was a main issue, we've decided on adding a mechanism to prevent people from comitting at the same time, which was implemented next, as part of the status pages, so it would also function as an overview for others on who exactly is doing what. That's what we did. And suddenly, by simply implementing this next step, we're getting all this critique about the new status pages nullifying existing translations teams? I truly thought it was a step into the right direction, and that's what everyone else here thought too. Maybe it wasn't? However, I let the community decide -- in its entirety.
Best Regards, Bernd
Christian
-- Fedora-trans-list mailing list Fedora-trans-list@redhat.com http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-trans-list
On Sat, Jun 26, 2004 at 03:46:22PM +1000, Bernd Groh wrote:
Christian,
Certainly. I believe everyone here is aware that people are usually speaking for themselves, without any particular hat on, unless otherwise stated.
Why then did the email from arabeyes talk about fedora policies, though they really only talked about what *I* said?
Because you are special :) Few people on this list have the possibility to publish something on a *.redhat.com server. So whether you like it or not, anything you publish looks (more) official. Mirek
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Alan Cox -
Behdad Esfahbod -
Bernd Groh -
Christian Rose -
Miloslav Trmač -
Mohamed Eldesoky -
Mohammed Elzubeir -
Munzir Taha -
Sarah Wang -
Sherif Abdelgawad -
Youcef Rabah Rahal