[Debian-l10n-devel] Thoughts about DDTP (Was: Number of requests for DDTP)

[Aron Xu]

On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 02:05:34PM +0200, Martijn van O wrote:
> On 29 July 2011 11:22, Nicolas François
> <nicolas.francois at centraliens.net> wrote:
> > Hi Aron,
> >
> > We need to understand more about your use case.
> > What are you doing with the files received from DDTP?
> >
> > Do you need all the descriptions?
> > How often do you need to update the descriptions?
> > How often do you need to receive translations contributed directly on
> > DDTP?
> > How often will you re-inject translations into DDTP?
> >
> > If you are creating a PO file (or multiple PO files), could we generate
> > this on the server and make it available to you and others?
> 
> This brings up a point, there are a number of functions in the web
> interface that are not well documented. For example, the web interface
> can produce PO files directly, for example.
> 

Definitely I don't know the web interface can produce PO files, or I
won't convert it by myself.

> So, I'd also be interested in what all these emails are used for
> (especially given the side-effects).

It's being converted to PO format, upload to Pootle, translators do the
work, convert back and send to the email interface, that's all. 

Honestly, our translators (zh_CN) said they don't like DDTSS's interface
and it's complex work flow (i.e, need three people to work on one
translation to let it in, by default settings of DDTSS, you already know
the manpower is always very limited). In other translation projects
which work on software interface, they usually have a translator <->
reviewer interaction, that is anyone can submit a translation, and
someone who is given the privilege can review it and decide.

That's why we try the Pootle approach because translators are at least
more familiar with the interface, though it's obviously not an ideal
solution. It has its shortages:
 1. Need a lot of work to be done to integrate it with current DDTP
 backend.
 2. It's not seriously translator/reviewer model. Though we can let
 translators only "suggest" and reviewers decide, translators cannot
 feel they are a part of the team, they get the feeling that they are
 not that welcomed and the project is only the toy of several people who
 do the reviews. In a word, it discourages collaboration.

I might need to explain more about why our translators don't like the
current DDTSS, and why Pootle discourages collaboration in this scope.

Translators don't like to work on a project with no statistics,
especially when the project does not tell them about the percentage of
progress. This is why all major open source translation collaboration
platform generates graphic statistics for translators (Transifex,
Pootle, Launchpad, etc). I know there *are* statistics published for
overall progress and popcon top 500, etc. But the fact is translators
cannot find them easily. It's not a matter of whether we have
documented it, it's a matter of user interface design.

DDTP is a huge project, and people get discouraged when they worked for
some while and the progress hasn't been pushed forward 1%. Debian has
thousands of packages, and even more descriptions await for translating.
Why not we set several milestones, select some packages for different
milestones. The selection could be classified to different target
audience, for example, "Desktop", "Programming", "Server" or by whatever
way that we can have further discussions. More over, we can have several
milestones for every set of packages, sorted by popcon score.
Translators and their teams can choose the sets and milestones they
would like to work on first, and what later. This can even form a more
efficient competition between teams, languages.

As for the collaboration model, I think what I've written before in this
mail is better, at least it has been tested overtime by many projects.
"Submitting" translations to someone who is skilled is accepted by most
people, so they don't need to be shy and worrying about "what if my
translations are bad?" They can communicate with a specific person (not
letting them write to a mailing list, with fears of being teased because
of his ignorance). We should keep in mind, translators are different
from software developers and users who are asking for help, they can be
developers who want to help, they can be long-time translation
contributors, they can also be random individuals who want to translate
some materials about their favorite software. They are special, maybe
random and very probably easy to lost.

Then we come to the topic about some detailed designs, and why Pootle
discourages people. Translators can be roughly divided into two
categories: long-term contributors and random ones. They both need to
have the ability to "submit" translations to who can review their
translations, not just "suggest". Suggesting translations on a
translation platform is always about to be ignored by others, and 
this is why Pootle does not work well. What they need is to "submit",
which they are sure someone will eventually have a look at what they've
worked, no matter how long time they have to wait. For long-time
contributors, they need a sense of team, often letting them notice that
they are not along, so they can keep up and not lost their interest very
quick. 


-- 
Regards,
Aron Xu
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