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

[andre999]

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