Mallard and Ubuntu-Translators and Translation Regressions

[David Planella]

El dj 25 de 02 de 2010 a les 08:18 +0000, en/na Matthew East va
escriure:
> 2010/2/25 David Planella <david.planella at ubuntu.com>:
> > El dv 12 de 02 de 2010 a les 15:48 +0100, en/na David Planella va
> > escriure:
> > [...]
> >>
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I apologise the delay in my reply. After reading the Mallard threads and
> >> the logs from the last docs team meeting, I understand most of the
> >> points have been addressed and that (please correct me if I'm wrong),
> >>
> >>       * Mallard will not be implemented in Lucid
> >>       * It will continually be evaluated, with an onlook to use it for
> >>         the next release (or whenever ready), with a current playground
> >>         branch and with a spec for a potential migration
> >>
> >> Regarding translations, Kyle is raising some valid points in terms of
> >> potential regression and additional work for translation teams, and I'd
> >> like to ask a few questions in order to understand in an early stage
> >> what this would mean to translators.
> >>
> >>       * I understand that the current documentation is already
> >>         topic-based. If so, I assume the migration to Mallard would be
> >>         mostly affecting packaging infrastructure and syntax, and not a
> >>         complete rewrite of documentation. Is that correct?
> >>
> >> My concerns regarding translations are simply that a migration is
> >> properly communicated to translators and as much content can be reused
> >> as possible. Translating documentation and reviewing it is a huge task,
> >> one which cannot be compared to regular application translation in terms
> >> of effort, so I'd like to only raise awareness on how changes can affect
> >> translations and make sure the process is as smooth as possible,
> >> gradual, and that translators are aware of changes at an early stage.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> David.
> >>
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Here's just a reminder of this thread. Has anyone had the chance to look
> > at those questions?
> 
> David,
> 
> I think at present we can only give a preliminary answer to these
> questions because we haven't really tried out Mallard in any serious
> way. So I suggest that we revisit the position when a transition
> actually starts to be looked at seriously. But I think we can say the
> following:
> 
> 1. Communication with translators and ensuring a good translator
> workflow will always be a priority for us. We will always seek to
> include translation and translators in our planning, as we have done
> in the past, and to communicate properly.

True, and just to reinstate that from the translation side: the emphasis
on translations and the good communication coming from the docs team has
always been outstanding, and we really thank you all for that.

> 2. In theory, transition to Mallard doesn't necessarily involve any
> rewriting of documentation, because our existing goal includes writing
> topic based documents, as you've said. Whether that will result in
> strings being reused is not something we can guarantee until we've
> tried out the translation workflow in more detail: Milo may have an
> idea because he is one of the leading contributors to Mallard
> documentation at Gnome.
> 3. If ubuntu-docs moves to Mallard, that will almost certainly result
> in a smaller documentation footprint between us and Gnome upstream -
> more documentation coming from upstream will be reused and integrated.
> That is good for translators, although of course the fact that Gnome
> upstream are planning to completely rewrite their documentation from
> scratch will mean that the emphasis of translators may move to Gnome
> away from us.
> 

Many thanks for the update Matthew.

Regards,
David.

-- 
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
david(dot)planella(at)ubuntu(dot)com
www.ubuntu.com



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