Anders Wegge Jakobsen wegge@wegge.dk writes:
Six weeks ago I became involved in an argument about translation of the mediawiki software. I made the comment below.
Yes, the obvious solution is that I maintain a private translation; at the same time one or more of the admins at dawiki plays catchup, whenever the inerface suddenly start sprouting english words, and the rest of the world get to see the worst of OSS. Everyone is happy.
Unfortunately, it have proven to be true. No substantial changes to the danish localization have happened since then. Since I have cooled of a bit since then, and my prediction have proven true, I'll try to summarize the problems with localization on translatewiki as I see them:
* With the current setup, translators will need to access the code, to actually see what cryptical strings like 'You have not specified target revision or revi sions to perform this function on.' actually mean.
* That a web interface exists does not equal that a large horde of skilled translators will be attracted.
* Noone likes to see others credited with their work.
This is not an attempt to renew a heated argument. The idea of providing a relative easy-to-use interface for translation work is better than having no one translating the interface into any particular language. But in my opinion, it is not at present time a substitute for having someone wit at least rudimentary PHP coding skills doing the translation and submitting patches or direct commits to svn.
And yes, the issue of crediting work was what angered me most. It still is, and unless I'm the one individual in the world with the thinnest skin on this matter, this issue will arise again.
Hi Wegge,
Contrary to your belief I think you I are still quite angry at something that happended or something that someone did or wrote. I have problem identifying what it is exactly, which makes it hard to address. I find few of the statements you made below to be true.
Can you let us know what you would need to be satisfied, or in your eyes be properly credited for everything you have done for the Danish translation? Your current choice of debate does not strike me as solution driven, which is something I personally very much prefer.
Kind regards,
Siebrand Mazeland
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] Namens Anders Wegge Jakobsen Verzonden: maandag 18 februari 2008 11:25 Aan: Wikimedia developers; Wikimedia Translators; MediaWiki internationalisation Onderwerp: Re: [Wikitech-l] An update on localisation in MediaWiki
Anders Wegge Jakobsen wegge@wegge.dk writes:
Six weeks ago I became involved in an argument about translation of the mediawiki software. I made the comment below.
Yes, the obvious solution is that I maintain a private translation; at the same time one or more of the admins at dawiki plays catchup, whenever the inerface suddenly start sprouting english words, and the rest of the world get to see the worst of OSS. Everyone is happy.
Unfortunately, it have proven to be true. No substantial changes to the danish localization have happened since then. Since I have cooled of a bit since then, and my prediction have proven true, I'll try to summarize the problems with localization on translatewiki as I see them:
* With the current setup, translators will need to access the code, to actually see what cryptical strings like 'You have not specified target revision or revi sions to perform this function on.' actually mean.
* That a web interface exists does not equal that a large horde of skilled translators will be attracted.
* Noone likes to see others credited with their work.
This is not an attempt to renew a heated argument. The idea of providing a relative easy-to-use interface for translation work is better than having no one translating the interface into any particular language. But in my opinion, it is not at present time a substitute for having someone wit at least rudimentary PHP coding skills doing the translation and submitting patches or direct commits to svn.
And yes, the issue of crediting work was what angered me most. It still is, and unless I'm the one individual in the world with the thinnest skin on this matter, this issue will arise again.
-- // Wegge http://geowiki.wegge.dk/wiki/Forside - Alt om geocaching Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indlæg *EN* gang.
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"Siebrand Mazeland" s.mazeland@xs4all.nl writes:
Contrary to your belief I think you I are still quite angry at something that happended or something that someone did or wrote. I have problem identifying what it is exactly, which makes it hard to address. I find few of the statements you made below to be true.
Yes, I'm still angry about some of the comments. I will be for eternity. But since that won't change, just forget it. Neither you, nor Niklas is to be blamed for someone else making flippant remarks.
Can you let us know what you would need to be satisfied, or in your eyes be properly credited for everything you have done for the Danish translation? Your current choice of debate does not strike me as solution driven, which is something I personally very much prefer.
The reason I may seem un-constructive, is the simple fact that while I'm able to point out the problems as I see them, I have no idea how to solve them. If we leave my ego out of the equation for the moment, the main issue is that at some of the interface messages will be completely unknown and opaque to the translators. The obvious solution to that is instrumenting the code, so that any message can be seen in its context. That is going to take quite a lot of time, and not something I think will happen right away.
More realistic, would be crafting a set of more or less static pages, that displays all of the messages in the contexts they are used. That will ba a game of constant catchup, but at least it will be easier than to change the entire codebase to include a demo feature of sorts.
Hi Wegge,
Thank you for your clarification. No system is perfect. I am of the opinion though that Translate can give more insight and information which leads to a more effective and efficient translation process than keeping an eye on SVN commits. Our opinions differ, obviously, so no need to elaborate on that. Instead, I chose to inform you. Please read on.
Extension Translate currently offers a way to add translation help in the language 'qqq'. Those hints are displayed in the Betawiki UI and are also exported to the .po files for offline translation. If the translation help is written correctly, translators would have all the context they need. All this is being done 'wiki-style', so improvements must be made and are being made.
An example of a translation hint is http://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki:Undeletelink/qqq for a message that was added recently.
Currently 588 of 1766 core messages have some form of documentation[1]. For extensions 99 messages have been documented. Making the sets complete is a lot of work. Currently about 10-15 messages are documented every week[2]. I would love more developer types like you to contribute on localisation by adding message documentation (basically it is a part of i18n). Please see this as an invitation. Anyone with the translator role can add such messages in Betawiki.
An example of a translation hint in Translate context can be seen at http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Image:Translation_hint_example.png. Additional fallback languages while translating are a second instrument we use to make life easier for translators[3].
I hope I have given you and others some additional insight in the workings of Betawiki with the above.
Cheers! Siebrand
[1] http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&task=reviewal... [2] http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?days=14&limit=250&title=Special%3AR... [3] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Image:Translation_fallback_example.png
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