[ Ubuntu-BD ] Fwd: Translators breaking documentation

[Russell John]

Important information for all documentation translators.


----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Translators breaking documentation
Date: Friday 13 October 2006 07:58
From: Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com>
To: ubuntu-translators at lists.ubuntu.com

Hi there,

I've just downloaded some translations of the desktopguide from the
ubuntu-docs source package. I was extremely disappointed to find that
the translations, almost without exception, introduce hundreds of errors
into the xml. This means that I (and others) will need to spend several
hours going through all of the xml to fix errors.

I have posted guidelines about how to translate documentation on this
list many times before, and I did so again when announcing translation
in this release cycle. It boils down to one simple rule - don't play
with the code!!! Specifically:

* Do not rearrange groups of tags - they will break!
* Do not translate tags, or entities (such as &hello;)
* To make sure you get the tags and code right - copy and paste it,
don't copy it by eye, because you will make mistakes.

Team leaders - please ensure that when guidelines are posted to this
list, they are actually conveyed to the translators, and that people are
not translating documentation without having a good grasp of these basic
guidelines.

The use of Rosetta for documentation was never a perfect solution, and
if we can't improve this situation, we may have to think about another
system - such as asking translators to build the xml and check for
errors before submitting it to the documentation team.

Hoping for your collaboration,

Matt