Hey, Bart and I had an interesting conversation about website translations last night (below), and I think it highlights some of our main challenges with our current translator workflow. I probably won't be able to make the meeting tomorrow, but it'd be great to start up a conversation about this (and i18n/l10n people as well). Thanks, Ricky ===== 02:17 < ricky> Argh, this is hard :-( 02:17 < ricky> I need to think a bit more before jumping into anything. 02:22 < couf> ricky: what's your plan with xml2po? 02:22 * couf just noticed a commit 02:24 < ricky> I've been experimenting with it, but there are downsides that I didn't see earlier. 02:24 < couf> have you looked at how the docs team uses it? 02:24 < ricky> For example, since it'd be extracting text directly from a generated site, it'd shut out any possibility of non-hacky "dynamic" content. 02:24 < ricky> (As in, content that updates on every website build) 02:25 < ricky> The other downside is that it'd require serious po file manipulation to migrate over. 02:25 < ricky> couf: Yeah, stickster_afk's the person that mentioned it to me. 02:26 < couf> yeah, that's a serious downside 02:26 < ricky> Their needs are slightly different from ours, though. 02:26 < ricky> :-( 02:26 < ricky> Here's the easiest solution for me. 02:26 < ricky> Take the git repo, make a directory for each language, completely break the workflow for translators and have them maintain parallel versions of the website for each language. 02:27 < ricky> That's really hard on translators, though. 02:27 < ricky> (And there are issues such as - how does a translator know when they need to update their translation?) 02:28 < ricky> I don't know... I'm not sure if PO files work well for fast-changing things like a website. 02:28 < ricky> I've been getting pain at every corner. 02:28 < ricky> Making the templating system substitute the right text... sucks. 02:28 < ricky> String extraction... sucks. 02:29 < ricky> Making sure that all translations are always in sync also sucks. 02:29 < couf> right :-/ 02:30 < ricky> So some general questions - how hard should I be trying to maintain the standard translator workflow? 02:30 < ricky> Which of the two problems (PO files vs. maintaining parallel versions) is more easily solvable? 02:31 < ricky> And I guess, what uses are we looking at with the website (and how will our choice of handling translations affect them?) 02:32 < couf> well from the translators viewpoint having parallel versions would erase all efforts L10N has been trying to do to create a standard workflow for everything 02:32 < ricky> Yeah, and I really don't want to do that 02:33 < couf> OTOH I do get that this will lead to more bad then good in the end 02:33 < couf> as PO-based work isn't really fitted for this stuff 02:34 < ricky> I'm not even 100% aware of a good alternative to PO-based stuff. 02:34 < couf> neither am I 02:34 < ricky> With parallel versions, it's still a big challenge to keep in sync with the original version. 02:36 < couf> hmm, we might want to cut down on translators a bit, have the languages sync up at release time and let the original change everytime we feel like it needs to 02:36 < couf> when it comes to users I'd say most users come to the site to download Fedora, and for the rest they would divert to the fedora-specific site in their locale like projectofedora.br and such 02:39 < ricky> Hm. 02:39 < ricky> Should that be our websites vision for the future? 02:40 < couf> I don't know, but we should think about it somehow 02:40 < ricky> And we have the exact same problem on other websites (even if they aren't supposed to be updated as often) 02:40 < ricky> Yeah. 02:42 * ricky wonders what the rest of the l10n team has to say about this. 02:43 < couf> they probably won't like it :) 02:43 < ricky> Well, not the parallel versions thing (which I'm not considering quite yet) 02:43 < ricky> Just how we can handle translations for something like a website. 02:44 < ricky> I wonder if anybody has experience doing something like this in a job or anything. 02:44 < ricky> I guess I should also mention that wiki translations will kind of break the workflow in the same way. 02:46 < couf> yeah, some have been talking of a PO-extraction layer on top of MW-API to make it sort of work with the workflow, but I'm not sure if that'll work in the end 02:48 < ricky> Yeah. This would be something that updates even faster than a website. 02:49 < couf> right, so in the end it looks like PO doesn't scale to websites :) 02:50 * couf notes: personal view, not L10N's view :) 02:53 < ivazquez> Perhaps this is a conversation we should be having in #fedora-i18n . 02:58 < ricky> Good point 02:58 < ricky> I'm actually going to get some sleep now 02:58 < ricky> couf: I think we touched over some important points in this conversation - mind if I send it to websites-list? 02:59 < ricky> (I want to get it in the discussion in tomorrow's meeting, even if I won't be there) 02:59 < couf> sure go ahead
Attachment:
pgpxjA1GOUwmR.pgp
Description: PGP signature
-- Fedora-websites-list mailing list Fedora-websites-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-websites-list
