[VOTE INSIDE] The docs translation "problem"

[Freek de Kruijf]

Op vrijdag 15 november 2024 17:01:08 Midden-Europese standaardtijd schreef 
Albert Astals Cid:
> Right now docs need to be generated manually by translators/team
> coordinators and commited to the docs/ folder.
> 
> This is something we don't communicate a lot and I'm sure some teams don't
> do that, not your fault.
> 
> Also it's relatively "easy" to commit broken docs that will break the
> application compilation (again not your fault again, the tooling is a bit
> fragile).
> 
> One of the things we were discussing with Luigi is to automate the docs
> compilation process.
> 
> Everyone likes automation, so that's a good thing, BUT there is a
> "problem", which is why we offloaded the compilation to humans in the
> first place.
> 
> The problem is that our current system, a particular documentation needs
> to be translated to 100% to be properly converted into an usable doc.
> 
> The easy solution is to remove a doc once it stops compiling, but that
> doesn't seem very optimal/fair because a single sentence would cause the
> doc to be removed and my understanding is that it's better to have a doc
> somewhat old doc translated than one with 0% translated.
> 
> The other easy solution is never to remove a doc even if it fails to
> compile, this can cause that the documentation gets SUPER OLD and then
> maybe it's not better to have a SUPER OLD translated documentation
> compared to a non translated documentation.
> 
> The middle ground (which is what we do with GUI messages) is to always
> generate the docs and if a particular string is missing use the English
> version of the string, this way we always have the newest documentation,
> as
> much translated as possible.
> 
> The middle ground of the middle group is fill missing translations with
> English but only if the translated percentage is bigger than say 75%
> 
> I think collectively want to move towards an automated system so we should
> adopt one of the 4 solutions described above (or if you have another
> magically perfect solution we have not thought about please say so).
> 
> PLEASE VOTE:
> 
> Which automatic solution do you prefer?
> 
> A) Remove translated documentation once they are not 100% translated
> 
> B) Keep previously 100% translated documentation once current version is
> not 100% translated
> 
> C) Use English text for non translated strings when generating translated
> documentation
> 
> D) Use English text for non translated strings when generating translated
> documentation but only if translated strings are > 75%, otherwise remove
> the translated documentation and use the English one.
> 
> I think I would vote for C, but I'm not really a translator nowadays so
> I'm
> not sure my vote counts.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>    Albert

Some time ago, when the Dutch translations of docmessages did not reach 100%, 
I had an adapted version of update_xml that generated docbooks when the 
percentage was at least 90%.

Currently we can keep up to 100%, so no need for the adapted version anymore.

My vote would be D.

-- 

fr.gr.

Freek de Kruijf
vertaler/coördinator van KDE