[Mageia-i18n] [proposition] Using Translate extension on Mageia wiki

Wed Oct 19 06:02:54 CEST 2011

Romain d'Alverny a écrit :
+> On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 13:31, Oliver Burger<oliver.bgr at googlemail.com>  wrote:
+>    
+>> Am Dienstag, 18. Oktober 2011, 13:11:33 schrieb Romain d'Alverny:
+>>      
+>>> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 20:27, Yuri Chornoivan<yurchor at ukr.net>  wrote:
+>>>        
+>>>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate
+>>>>
+>>>> This extension can significantly ease up maintenance of the translations
+>>>> with no additional efforts to sync translations with original (automatic
+>>>> synchronization).
+>>>>          
+>>> Actually, we didn't plan to manage l10n that way, but by having
+>>> distinct wiki instances per locale (wiki.mageia.org/en/,
+>>> wiki.mageia.org/fr/ and so on) and interwiki-link them. The same way
+>>> Wikipedia does it actually (and we used to at MDV as well).
+>>>
+>>> So using this extension means a significant change in how we lay things out.
+>>>        
+>> ...
+>> If I understand this correctly, it will kind of force syncronization between
+>> the en wiki and the others.
+>>      
+> As I understand it, it gives translation progress stats between
+> locales and allows to translate chunks by chunks (so it's a 1-1
+> translation, with less freedom for a given locale to do things a bit
+> differently - for good and for bad).
+>
+>    
+>> As I said in last i18n meeting as well as in doc team, I'd like to keep the
+>> more important things like
+>> - really important documentation
+>> - errata
+>> - information about the project
+>> - ...
+>> in sync.
+>>      
+> That's clearly a nice feat; does it do it really with this extension?
+> Couldn't this be done as well with a watchdog script on a given set of
+> defined pages, which reports is fed into i18n web page or ml? (or even
+> use mediawiki page watch feature directly).
+>    
+
+It would nice to have a utility that maintains a database of 
+corresponding changes, where each l10n signs off on entries.  With some 
+way of signalling languages to be translated.  (Say "all", or a selected 
+list.)
+If for whatever reason translating a change is not wanted, that could be 
+flagged.
+So a wiki entry concerning an event in Barcelona written in Catalan 
+could be translated only to Spanish, and maybe French.
+And the database would keep track of translations to be done.
+
+>> But I do see fields in which a dezentralization is important as well,
+>> e.g. planning an event can be done very nicely using a wiki (like we did for
+>> FOSDEM 2011 or MandrivaUser.de does for some time.
+>>      
+> Well, decoupling is not always best, but it helps
+>
+> Here are issues I see with the extensions:
+>   - non-localized URLs (instead of w.m.o/en/Home and w.m.o/fr/Accueil
+> (ie, localized title _in_ the URL), we would have w.m.o/Home and
+> w.m.o/Home/fr (English title in the URL); that's not blocking, but
+> that's not so good either;
+>    
+
+I really like the localisation of page names, although I agree that it's 
+not essential.
+
+>   - inconsistent navigation in a chosen locale (tested on the KDE Userbase wiki):
+>     - my browser accepts French as a primary language, so content is
+> returned to me in French;
+>     - I decide to look at the Spanish version of a page; fine, it
+> works; my intent is to navigate the Spanish-speaking pages now;
+>     - clicking on another wiki link will forward me to the default URL,
+> that will be rewritten in French =>  back to French, where I would have
+> expected Spanish;
+>     - right, digging into this, this is because those links are
+> prefixed such as: "Special:myLanguage/Applications" which rewrites to
+> Applications/fr
+>    
+
+To me, that is a blocker.  It should default to the browser language, 
+and if the user selects another language, it should stick with the 
+selection.
+
+>   - we didn't plan to setup the wiki that way *, and that's a
+> significant change, so either that is really important for you and it
+> has to be considered _now_, or it can be done differently with the
+> planned wiki setup.
+>
+> * expected wiki setup is:
+>   - http://wiki.mageia.org/en/
+>   - http://wiki.mageia.org/fr/
+> ... and so on, with locale aware interwiki links (the way Wikipedia
+> does it). It certainly has drawbacks too. But the point is that things
+> get done in the end.
+>    
+
+I like the planned setup.  The difficulty of keeping things in sync can 
+be minimized with some sort of watch script.  In any case, keeping l10ns 
+in sync requires real translators with or without this extension.
+Remember that the wiki changes gradually over time.  It is not as though 
+there are a lot of frequent changes to be kept up to date, as in a blog.
+Nor are there release dates for the wiki, where all translations _must_ 
+be done by a specific date.
+> Romain
+>
+>    
+my 2 cents :)
+
+-- 
+André
+
+