Ubuntu allowing translations into unsupported languages
 

I've no idea where to send this, as it involves Rosetta I've sent it here.

As the bug supervisor for tuxmath I received
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/227392. It seems that Ubuntu has
allowed people to translate the package into languages it can't
support. The version of the program in hardy doesn't have support for
right-to-left languages (and maybe many non Latin alphabets). Despite
this Ubuntu has translated the program into Hebrew, which Doesn't
Work.

There is a gsoc student working on localisation issues, and the
current version in SVN is built with sdl-pango which should deal with
this issue. However it's still a waste of time for someone to
translate our program into a language we can't support.

The lead developer was surprised that Ubuntu has a Hebrew translation.
Like many upstreams they have no idea that Ubuntu translates packages
itself, and doesn't send the translations upstream.

I'm going to send him the new language po files, how we deal with the
difference between po files for languages we both have is a common and
recurrent problem that I personally don't have a workflow for.

Caroline
(with tux4kids hat on)

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Ubuntu allowing translations into unsupported languages
 

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Hi Caroline.

Caroline Ford wrote:
> I've no idea where to send this, as it involves Rosetta I've sent it here.
>
> As the bug supervisor for tuxmath I received
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/227392. It seems that Ubuntu has
> allowed people to translate the package into languages it can't
> support. The version of the program in hardy doesn't have support for
> right-to-left languages (and maybe many non Latin alphabets). Despite
> this Ubuntu has translated the program into Hebrew, which Doesn't
> Work.

Nothing wrong with this IMO. How should LP/Rosetta know what kind of
scripts a particular software can support?
And as you have correctly stated in the bug report, this bug won't be
fixed until a new version is uploaded. Also nothing wrong with that.
Besides, this bug wouldn't have been discovered if no one would have
translated that program into Hebrew and actually tried to use it in that
language. So, it's a good thing to know that there is a problem, don't
you think? ;)

> There is a gsoc student working on localisation issues, and the
> current version in SVN is built with sdl-pango which should deal with
> this issue. However it's still a waste of time for someone to
> translate our program into a language we can't support.

How can a user know that unless he can read and interpret the sources
(and actually did so)?
In all recent Linux distributions, desktops can deal with almost any
kind of language and script and therefor it should be safe for a user to
assume that most (if not all) applications can support all kind of
languages and scripts. If it turns out that an application cannot deal
with that, then it's a bug in that application and should be fixed.

> The lead developer was surprised that Ubuntu has a Hebrew translation.
> Like many upstreams they have no idea that Ubuntu translates packages
> itself, and doesn't send the translations upstream.

well, the issue that we don't send the translations upstream is indeed
something we work on to improve. However, we don't have any solution
ready yet, because that is mainly a logistic problem... we would need to
keep track of all upstream bug contacts for each package. Unless this
information is stored and maintained (!) in the package itself in an
easy to parse format, so that such kind of bugs can be submitted
automatically by script, I don't see any practical way to solve this
issue any time soon.
Suggestions for this are welcome, of course.

> I'm going to send him the new language po files, how we deal with the
> difference between po files for languages we both have is a common and
> recurrent problem that I personally don't have a workflow for.

Currently we give user contributed translation a higher priority IIRC,
but it can be overridden with the upstream version, if the translation
team feels the upstream version is better.
IMHO this is up to upstream how to handle this situation.

Cheers
Arne
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Ubuntu allowing translations into unsupported languages
 

On Wed, 2008-05-07 at 11:06 +0800, Arne Goetje wrote:
> > The lead developer was surprised that Ubuntu has a Hebrew translation.
> > Like many upstreams they have no idea that Ubuntu translates packages
> > itself, and doesn't send the translations upstream.
>
> well, the issue that we don't send the translations upstream is indeed
> something we work on to improve. However, we don't have any solution
> ready yet, because that is mainly a logistic problem... we would need to
> keep track of all upstream bug contacts for each package. Unless this
> information is stored and maintained (!) in the package itself in an
> easy to parse format, so that such kind of bugs can be submitted
> automatically by script, I don't see any practical way to solve this
> issue any time soon.
> Suggestions for this are welcome, of course.

I'd propose Ubuntu people stop forking packages with proprietary
translations and instead work with the upstream projects properly. The
current situation only compounds the perception amongst people that
Ubuntu = all of FOSS, which is dangerous.

I used to be a Ubuntu en_GB person (mostly in name), but my principles
got in the way.
--
Bruce Cowan <https://launchpad.net/~bruce89/>


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Ubuntu allowing translations into unsupported languages
 

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 02:26:27PM +0100, Bruce Cowan wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-05-07 at 11:06 +0800, Arne Goetje wrote:
> > > The lead developer was surprised that Ubuntu has a Hebrew translation.
> > > Like many upstreams they have no idea that Ubuntu translates packages
> > > itself, and doesn't send the translations upstream.
> >
> > well, the issue that we don't send the translations upstream is indeed
> > something we work on to improve. However, we don't have any solution
> > ready yet, because that is mainly a logistic problem... we would need to
> > keep track of all upstream bug contacts for each package. Unless this
> > information is stored and maintained (!) in the package itself in an
> > easy to parse format, so that such kind of bugs can be submitted
> > automatically by script, I don't see any practical way to solve this
> > issue any time soon.
> > Suggestions for this are welcome, of course.
>
> I'd propose Ubuntu people stop forking packages with proprietary
> translations and instead work with the upstream projects properly. The
> current situation only compounds the perception amongst people that
> Ubuntu = all of FOSS, which is dangerous.

Well, there's a practical concern, which is that upstream doesn't
normally translate already-released versions, which is what most
end-users see, and many end-users are able to contribute to. This is
what rolling language packs solves, and having people come in and help
via Rosetta to make /their/ desktop better translated is an important
advantage we have today.

At any rate I agree with you that helping manage these translations back
into upstream is essential in the big picture, and that's work that will
be happening post July as we move Rosetta into next gear.
--
Christian Robottom Reis | http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 3376 0125

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