Rosetta feedback

[Jordi Mallach]

I see a few of your questions were left unanswered. Here we go!

On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 10:06:56PM +0200, Gilles Debunne wrote:
> - Selecting "untranslated" in the Show combo box displays already 
> translated strings that need to be reviewed. It seems more efficient to 
> only display those that indeed have no translation at all and to add a 
> "Review needed" entry in the Show menu.

You're probably right. Can you add this to
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/RosettaWishlist?

> - I don't know what to do with the "Someone should review this translation" 
> checkbox. Am I supposed to leave it checked when I'm unsure of my 
> translation ? I sometimes unchecked it, but realized that it was still 
> checked when I came back later. As far as I understood, this is something 
> that only the translation administrator should see and uncheck, but that 
> seems strange.

That sounds like a bug. Is it still happening now?
In gettext-speak, "needs review" means the string is "fuzzy", ie, it has
changed slightly, and needs some adjusting. Some translators like to
mark it if they are not sure about their translation so other team mates
can easily find these doubtful strings and lend a hand. "Needs review"
strings are NOT used by programs, ie, any string marked like this will
be treated as not translated by the language packs.

> - Many of the strings that needed review had an argument typos (%qD 
> translated to %d). I assume this is why they had to be reviewed. These 
>  typos could be fixed automatically (at least when there is a single 
> parameter). An explanation of some %J or %L prefix would also be welcome.

It's a common problem that the application programmers don't add hints
to translators about what %L is. If the programmer adds a comment,
Rosetta is able to read it, and it'd be shown in a box with the info
right next to the string. Without this cooperation from authors, Rosetta
has little to do besides adding an interface to see the source directly
in HCT or whatever.

> - Translation is choice. Some important words (say "package" for the rpm 
> project) have several possible translations. It would be convenient to have 
> (project-dependent?) official translations available to ensure consistency.

You probably mean glossaries. Rosetta has some features regarding this,
but more is to come when more user interface is added to control it.

> - Alternately, a search engine among already validated translations 
> (package specific or not) would be handy and would again provide a better 
> consistency.

As stated a few minutes ago, this is #1 request. We'll have it soon,
hopefully. It's really useful.

> - There should be a search engine for the mailing list so that newbie can 
> grep in it and avoid sending this kind of messages :)

This is probably out of our hand. Maybe mailman 7.5 does include it ;)

Mark, is there any plan to add a searchable archive for ubuntu lists?

> However, it is really cool to feel part of this small planet using Rosetta.

Glad to hear. Please feel free to post more ideas or questions!

Jordi
-- 
Jordi Mallach Pérez  --  Debian developer     http://www.debian.org/
jordi at sindominio.net     jordi at debian.org     http://www.sindominio.net/
GnuPG public key information available at http://oskuro.net/
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