[haiku-doc] Another try at user guide translations
- From: Humdinger <humdingerb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Haiku Documentation ML <haiku-doc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:15:25 +0200
Hi there!
Once again, I've been thinking on how to organize translations of the user
guide...
After much pondering on what's necessary to create a website and its database back-end to
keep all translations in sync, I realized that it quickly becomes too complex to be easily
implemented, especially considering I have no idea how to actually code such things.
I was wondering if we shouldn't use a low tech interim solution. Maybe one day we'll
find/create a sophisticated system and just import what translations we have by then and
maintain it more efficiently.
My suggestion for a low tech approach:
One coordinator (plus a backup) maintains a spreadsheet with all translations and their
versions. The HTML of all languages as well as the spreadsheet itself live in SVN
alongside the English pages. I've created an OpenOffice spreadsheet, see screenshot of the
top few rows at http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1615/translationtrackersprea.png
The table can also be exported as HTML.
After the column of the files and their current English revision come all the different
languages ("de" and "fr" in the linked shot).
Every language has a cell indicating if the translation needs updating (red) or is
up-to-date (green) by comparing the current English revision with the one used for the
translation. Another smaller cell shows if a page is currently checked out (yellow) or
available (white).
"rev4trans" is the English revision that was used for the translation of the
file.
"co date/user/en-rev" are the details when a page is checked-out for translation. "co
en-rev" is the English revision at the time the page was checked out, thereby tracking if
the English page was changed while the translation was going on (which should be avoided
if possible).
Maintaining that spreadsheet is the job of the coordinator. He also hands out a page to a
translator who requested it on the documentation mailing list, fills in the details in the
spreadsheet and commits pages to SVN.
I know this manual labor is not ideal, but I am willing to do that for the foreseeable
future. I don't think it's that much work anyway... :)
English pages are still the originals for all other languages, i.e. new pages and updates
have to be done for English first.
I hope you agree that this is a workable solution. Granted, it depends on the translators
being comfortable with editing HTML files, but I think that's not a big problem for our
current clientele. Everyone is quite technical and also doesn't mind to learn a thing on
the way. It's not rocket science. :)
Anyway, this is my proposal. I fear if we don't start somewhere and keep waiting for a
perfect online solution to pop up, it just won't get done. Seeing Adrien's progress on
enabling localization of the system, I think it's time to start now.
Thanks and sorry for the long mail... :)
Regards,
Humdinger
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