[Pkg-isocodes-devel] Fw: iso_3166-1.8.pot

[Benno Schulenberg]

Tobias Toedter wrote:
> We certainly don't want to make those
> imports harder than they need to be. I hope we can work out a
> reasonable solution for a better synchronization.

When package maintainer makes use of the Translation Project (TP), 
the idea is that he or she delegates all translation work, and 
after that can forget about PO files: only the TP handles them.  
All the maintainer does is run rsync before rolling a new release, 
and announce this release to the TP coordinators.
(See also section 2 on the following page, especially the last two 
paragraphs:  http://translationproject.org/html/maintainers.html)

I am willing to do a one-time synchronization for iso-codes, but 
don't want to have to keep importing iso_* PO files after every 
iso-codes release.

> Indeed, French is special, because
> Christian does not need to translate the English texts.

Okay, French has been marked as external.

> Thanks for your offer. However, I can only suggest to new
> translators to join the TP, I certainly cannot force them.

Of course you can't force them, but if you could write down 
somewhere that using the TP is the preferred way, that would 
already be something.

> Currently, we accept translations from the TP, via the Debian Bug
> Tracking system, and per direct write access to our SVN
> repository. Some people send their translations to our mailing
> list.

What do you do when a Dutch person sends in an amended PO file for 
say iso_15924?  Do you simply accept it?  How can you decide 
whether the changes are good or not?    A major idea of the TP is to 
make a team responsible for the quality of the translations.  When 
you bypass this team by accepting PO files directly...

What I would like you to do with any PO file submission is: forward 
it to the relevant team leader at the TP, because these leaders are 
the ones who should be coordinating the translations for their 
language.

> As you can see, there are currently several different workflows
> involved, and I'd like to maintain those different approaches for
> translators. The main reason for the iso-codes package is to
> accept translations, therefore I would not like to force
> translators to one single workflow, but rather keep as many
> channels for collaboration open as possible.

In my opinion getting the maximum number of translations is not the 
most important, but rather getting good quality translations.  
People that do good work are normally quite willing to have their 
work inspected and critized by others, they don't have any problem 
with joining a group of translators at the TP.

> Could you please explain what "marking a translation as external"
> means? Will those .po files be skipped during import of a new
> iso-codes tarball?

We normally never import PO files from tarballs.  When the TP 
handles the translations for a package, the PO files at the TP are 
the master files, any changes that need to be made must be made 
there.  The maintainer of 'tar' has taken this to its logical 
consequence and has removed all PO files from his repository; 
before making a release his Makefile just runs rsync to fetch the 
files from the TP, rolls the tarball, and then discards them again.

> Or will the TP copy of those files always be 
> overwritten by our .po file? Will they be ignored completely 
> (i.e. not appear on the TP website)?

PO files for certain domains that are marked external for some
language are not handled at all, they are not stored at the TP, 
they are ignored completely.

> If a translation has been marked as external, is it possible to
> remove that mark again, so that a new translator can use the TP,
> while the former translator didn't want to? Is it possible the
> other way round?

The external mark can of course be changed whenever necessary.  But 
preferrably it is only ever removed.  :)

Regards,

Benno