[Dwn-trans-english] Integrating reviews and translations in the Debian Project News

[Simon Paillard]

[ debian-l10n-french in BCC, in the case someone want to comment ]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:23:41PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
> There is currently an new attempt ongoing to get the Debian Project
> News (DPN), the successor of our news letter "Debian Weekly News",
> running again.  Discussion took place on the debian-publicity
> mailing list, and - as we no longer would like to use the wiki -
> already set up an alioth project as well as an subversion repository
> (with commit access to all DDs, all others must get a -guest
> account).
> 
> At this step, we would very much appreciate feedback to include
> translations, especially regarding the planed time line.
> 
> We try to send the DPN out bi-weekly.  Our current plan would be to
> "freeze" them every second Friday and send them out the following
> Monday.  That would (in theory) allow reviews and translators time
> to catch up and prepare the DPN in their languages.
> 
> 
> This opens a couple of questions, boiling down to "will it work for you"?
> 
> * Would native English reviewers prefer to review the frozen issue
> or review while it's still being edited?
> * Would it cause a big problem for translators, if it reviewing and
> translating is done in parallel?

I fear some reviews can rephrase the DPN so much that translators get
lost.
Maybe coordinate closer with -l10n-english so that reviewing on a per
item basis ?

> * I guess one weekend is okay for you to finish the translation?

It may be a bit short, in that case IMO releasing the translation may be
up to the translation team.

> * Did I forget anything else?

* Integrate translation-header checks from webwml to get easily the
  status of the translation w/t the english version, inside the DPN
  repo.

> And would you like your translations to be integrated into the
> publicity project's subversion repository (so everything would be
> together), or where would you like to work?  That would have the
> benefit, that I could add all translations to the websites CVS at
> the same time.  That would be much easier than telling the other
> languages to add theirs, or for them to sit their waiting for my
> commit, wouldn't it?
 
Agreed, it's the best way to keep track of changes in the english
version and thus ensure of the freshness of the translation.

> From time to time, we might need to stretch the timeline a bit; many
> things happen during weekends, so it will probably happen, that we
> need to add some last minute articles (ftp-master sometimes asked us
> to delay releasing an issue a couple of minutes, as they where just
> about to send a mail out, which might be interesting for the DPN).
> So I would much appreciate a way to tell the persons, responsible
> for sending out the news, that the issue is a bit delayed (unless
> all of you volunteer to subscribe to the -publicity list of course
> ;)

Maybe it's easier to just tell translators to *always* wait for your
signal before sending the translation.
 
> So could someone please shed light on me, who's actively taking care
> of sending announcements out to the following lists?
> 
> debian-news		- Myself
debian-news-french - Simon Paillard
> debian-news-german	- I can send them there, but won't have time for
> translations
> debian-news-italian	- Last Mail 2007?#
> debian-news-portuguese
> debian-news-spanish

> PS: Many thanks for the French team and Jean-Edouard Babin for
> writing a script transforming the wml output into a (nearly) proper
> formatted e-mail version.  I took the liberty to adding it to the
> publicity svn repository, too.

I will forward your thanks to Jean-Edouard :-)

-- 
Simon Paillard