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

[Yuri Chornoivan]

написане Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:11:33 +0300, Romain d'Alverny  
<rdalverny at gmail.com>:

> Hi,
>
> sorry for the delay, I just saw the point in last Council meeting
> notes about this.
>
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 20:27, Yuri Chornoivan <yurchor at ukr.net> wrote:
>> I just wanted to propose to use Translate extension on it. It is now
>> successfully used on KDE UserBase:
>> http://userbase.kde.org/Welcome_to_KDE_UserBase and TechBase
>>
>> Advantages of this extension as well as the contact information of  
>> authors
>> can be found here:
>>
>> 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.
>
> I guess each solution has its own benefit, so how would these compare?

If it is planned to have just several static pages which will be  
translatable (no changes, one time translation, announcement for every new  
translatable pages) the old approach is good enough. But I have an  
impression that this is not the case.

The old-style translation process [1], [2] implies one of the following  
options:

1. Translator just copy and paste the content from the original page and  
translate it (inter-wiki links will be established by the bot)
2. Translator should make some modification of the original page to make  
the translation visible then copy the content and translate it

There are several shortcomings in this approach:

1. It is hard to find all the pages that are worth translating (the list  
should be maintained manually)
2. It is easy to begin the translation of incomplete pages under  
construction or outdated pages
3. It is not easy to begin translation [1], [2]
4. It is hard to track the changes (you should subscribe on the page feed  
or add it to the watch list to get notified)
5. It is hard to maintain the translation (usually you should guess about  
the part of the translation to be changed in view of the original changes)
6. It is hard to know that the translation is outdated
7. It is hard to keep the coherence of the core documentation (isn't it be  
good to have manuals on distribution collected on install CD with major  
translations converted from wiki and 100% coherent?)

Translate extension allows to avoid these problems:

1. All translatable pages are collected in one list (e.g. [3]).
2. Every team can have its own untranslatable pages (e.g. [4]). All pages  
are separated by the team domains (/<language_code>, e.g. "/fr") and team  
categories.
3. Pages can be added or removed from translation by the wiki admins.  
Translation of the pages, which are not marked for translation is  
prohibited.
4. To begin translation just register, ask to be added to the translators  
group and push "Translate the page" or the corresponding link in the list  
of pages.
5. Changes are tracked automatically. The extension shows the changes in  
every module with colors.
6. Automatic maintenance of the translations. All unchanged parts are  
kept, all changed are marked as fuzzy.
7. Every outdated block is marked with red (e.g. [5]).
8. As all the complete translations are semantically same (extension has  
its own embedded QA) they can be exported as docbook with localized  
screenshots in docbook format (e.g. [6]). Docbook can be easily converted  
to html, pdf, etc.

[1]  
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Contributor_Documentation/1/html/Translation_Quick_Start_Guide/sect-Translation_Quick_Start_Guide-Translating_Wiki.html
[2] http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/HowToTranslateWiki
[3]  
http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Special%3ALanguageStats&code=de&suppresscomplete=1
[4] http://userbase.kde.org/Translation_Workflow/Ukrainian
[5] http://userbase.kde.org/Krita/de
[6] http://userbase.kde.org/How_To_Convert_a_UserBase_Manual_to_Docbook