Translations (was Re: svn commit: r43974 - head/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/advanced-networking)

[Warren Block]

On Tue, 18 Feb 2014, Remko Lodder wrote:

> My project at work is not able to keep up with the ?content spree? that Dru is
> doing to make things better. Good work, but a drama for translation teams that
> need to be in sync first (and with a train that moves so fast, it will remain
> out of date).

Maybe the only way to do that is translate a fixed revision/snapshot. 
At least with our existing system.

> Do note that translating strings of text might have a dramatic result; especially
> in non english versions, one translation might fit the one line but the other line
> wouldn?t fit. Although ofcourse this sounds interesting there is much more to it.
> (we do not have a set of predefined things we mention like $_[LANG] = ?The bird
> flew over the house?; which is used once or perhaps twice. We have ?rolling? content
> like a book.

Translation software like Pootle or poedit generally gives the 
translator the choice.  Content is shown in chunks, like a title or a 
sentence.  If one or more translations of that chunk already exist 
(either from the current document or a different one!), the translator 
can choose from them, or enter a better translation of their own.

This would radically change the way we do things.  Translators would 
still need to be aware that source documents had changed, but the 
translation software would identify parts that were not yet translated. 
It would ease the job for existing translators and lower the threshold 
for new translators.

Obviously, this is all vague and ill-defined.  Actual implementations 
that can be tested would be much more useful.  I believe the tools in 
textproc/po4a are from Debian and somewhat dated.  textproc/itstool 
might do a better job separating content if we can just get it to 
recognize and use our XML catalogs.

An easy way for translators to try it out is the next step.