[ros-translate] Language Coordinators, Translation process

[Mark IJbema]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 10:18:08PM +0300, Aleksey Bragin wrote:
>               Hello,
> in this email I'd like to outline the translation process, and how Language
> Coordinators (LCs) participate in it. (TC = Translation Coordinator).
> 
> Process (right now for the website, later advanced) :
> 1. TC gives every LC the content to translate in form of a zipped archive
> containing HTML text

What form would that be? The internal form of EZ Publish?

> 2. Every LC distributes the stuff over his translators, every translator
> translates his own part
> 3. As soon as translators finished, they send their work to the LC.
> 4. LC reviews (this part is very important!) the translation, and, if he
> thinks it isn't fully correct, asks the corresponding translator to 'fix'
> errors, or asks another translator to translate this another way.

I think the german team might want to consider to do all translations
double, so two versions are present at this point, so their good points
can be merged (since they're with many)

> 5. As soon as LC is satisfied, he gathers all pieces together, zip them, and
> send them to TC.

This all sounds like a poor mans cvs. Is there any reason for not using
cvs? Though it would do, but it's not really scalable this way imho.

> 6. TC publishes it on the website.

Why can't the LC do that? that would save you a lot of time? What are
you gonna do, since you can't review it, right?

> Everytime Jason changes the website, I will give out the edited/new content
> to translate.
> 
> Now, for the process of actual translation from one language to another. To
> properly translate some words X number of times throughout the translated
> text (by properly I mean the same) we will run Dictionaries for each
> language.

Not for each language... Since the source is the same, the same words
should be in them. So i think they shouldn't be seperated so strongly.
For instance, if someone adds a word to some dictionary, it should be
added to all others as well, but with questionmarks.

> Dictionary will be kept at the CVS, and only LCs can update them. But LCs
> will update it by the information from the translators. So, every time
> translators think this term should be included in the table, he sends a
> specific request to LC, containing original english word, proposed(!)
> translation, and his comments about this (optional).
> LCs review(!) this, and if he agrees, he adds this entry to the dictionary.
> In case he doesn't agree, he may still add this entry to the dictionary, but
> don't check the 'Approved' flag of this term.
> 
> Translators should translate terms which exist in the dictionary EXACTLY as
> their translation is given (certainly so it is grammatically and
> syntaxically correct, and all declensions, conjugations are applied, if
> necessary).

We might want to consider building a tool which marks all of those words
in the source language (shouldn't be too much work in perl for example).

> As for format of the dictionary - it will be in simple XML format, I will
> provide samples. They will be located in a special CVS module, so anyone can
> check them out everytime, and only LC can update them.

Will you provide those first before we start? I'd like to see if i agree
(for instance, imho it should be easy to merge dictionaries).

Mark