[Slapt-get-devel] transifex for translations

[George Vlahavas]

Hi :)

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Igor Murzov <
intergalactic.anonymous at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Sep 2012 08:15:08 -0400
> "Jason Woodward" <woodwardj at jaos.org> wrote:
>
> > George Vlahavas has been kind enough to clean up the transifex setup and
> > properly explain a usable workflow to me.
>
> Not to me :[
>

Not much to explain to translators really. "Use the transifex web
interface" is the only advice that can be given.


> I took a look at transifex and I can't find anything useful here,
> except of the translating on the web.


transifex is a central hub for translations. It provides a web interface to
help with translating, but that's not all there is to it. One of the
advantages of transifex is that many people can collaborate on the same
translation, making it a lot easier to translate medium to big size
projects like slapt-get and gslapt. It doesn't all fall on a single
translator. Translators can monitor progress and see where their work is
needed, add/upload translations, ask for reviews if they're not sure, have
their translations reviewed. One other great advantage is that it makes
life for the software developers a lot easier. They don't have to do manual
work for every single change in the translations, they need only run a
single command and have all the latest translations merged in their
software. I personally have over 30 projects on transifex (not really sure
about the number, it could be bigger). It would have been a complete
nightmare to try to manage all of them manually with email submissions.

BTW, you can also download the po file you're interested in, translate in
the way you're used to locally (offline if you like) and when you're done
with it you can just upload it to transifex.


> But I believe that there are
> no slackware users, that don't know how to edit files and create
> patches locally.
>

Want to bet? In any case, even if that was true, transifex also checks your
translations for errors, so there is no way you'll submit a malformed po
file. Before you say that this is not going to happen because slackware
people just don't do that, you should know that there were already a few
slapt-get translations which were broken due to malformed po files and
apparently nobody had noticed. They were fixed because of the transition to
transifex.

Not to mention that a lot of people find a web interface a lot friendlier
and easier to use. I personally use transifex even for my own software. I
always use the web interface, even when the latest po file is right there
in front of me.

>
> I would like to not register on transifex, and i'm asking you to
> abandon any updates to russian translation. I would like to get
> patches on the mailing list to review them.
>

You have every right to refuse to register in any website. As Jason said,
you can still continue using your old workflow with translating locally and
sending patches. Nobody stops you from doing that. But please consider that
it would be easier for Jason if you just used transifex, he wouldn't need
to worry about and manage your translations manually, even if it's possible
to do it. You should also keep in mind that translations in transifex can
be ahead of the translations in git, so you should check the latest
translation on transifex before you start translating anything. Maybe
somebody else has already done the work you're about to do. You don't have
to register to check upon existing translations or downloading their latest
versions.

What transifex helps with, is that it lifts the burden of maintaining
translations from the developer. Let the developers worry about their code
and let the translators worry about translations. ;)

George
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