What happens to translations when upstream is brought in

[Og Maciel]

All,

I am thoroughly enjoying this thread for it allows us to (hopefully)
see what the issues and obstacles are for a sucessful symbiotic
relationship between Rosetta users and the major localization groups
out there.

I think that most would agree with me when I say that Rosetta needs
some improvement in order to become a sucessfull tool for this
relationship to work out.  It is also important, IMNSHO to get people
to trust it (Rosetta) as an efficient and reliable tool.  How do we
get to do that???  By getting a list of wishes, annoiances, and
improvements going somewhere in a wiki and prioritizing them in the
order that would allow us to hit the ground running as soon as
possible!  Obviously we need the feedback of our Rosetta developers to
see how viable some of these will be in a short term, and maybe even
consider the possibility of getting more people involved?

Based on the comments in this thread so far, I have gotten a feeling
that there hasn't been much flexibility from the localization groups.
Don't get me wrong, just the fact that we are all here discussing this
is a great sign of willingness, but in order to move forward, it is
imperative to have flexibility from all sides.  We cannot just bring
in all translations from upstream and immediately desconsider
everything the Rosetta localization groups have achieved so far.  By
considering one set of translations "superior" than the "other", we
won't get too far...  People dedicate hours and hours of their
precious time working on these translations, and it would be
completely unfair to take all of this for granted.

So, if you all allow me a few seconds of your attention, I'd like to
put down some of my ideas.  Obviously, there will be plenty of room
for improvements... so feel free to chime in...  ;)

1)  We bring in translations from upstream as they are and consider
them to be our standard;  I know some people won't like the idea, but
bear with me a little longer.

2)  Localization teams (i.e., gnome_pt_BR, kde_pt_BR, ubuntu_pt_BR)
get together and in a massive effort of a couple of days, arrive at
one set of documents to rule how translations should be handled;

3)  During step (2), key members from each group get selected by their
peers to form an unified team;

4)  A new system of entry for new members would be placed in effect,
with a tutoring system that would enforce that everyone plays by the
same rules;  Since the groups would be working synchronized, even
those who rather work with POs (and not via the web interface) could
continue doing things they usually do, including importing the POs
into Rosetta once they're ready;

5)  All distributions of Linux and open source in general could then
use this unified translated universe and no single distribution would
have a "more complete" set than the other...

Ok, my boss seems to have noticed me typing to much and may expect to
see a lot of code from me...  ;)

Please take a good 5 minutes to digest all of this before replying...

Cheers,
-- 
Og B. Maciel

(Leader) Ubuntu Brazilian Portuguese Translators

ogmaciel at ubuntu.com
ogmaciel at ubuntubrasil.org
og.maciel at gmail.com

GPG Keys: D5CFC202

http://www.ogmaciel.com (en_US)
http://blog.ogmaciel.com (pt_BR)