Is it possible to improve generating .pot files from English .docbook files?

[Yuri Chornoivan]

неділя, 29-січ-2017 20:53:31 Jaap Woldringh написано:
> Op 29-01-17 om 18:23 schreef Albert Astals Cid:
> > This thread is a textbook example of why top posting makes things hard to
> > read.
> > 
> > TBH I'm not sure what the problem is, is the problem that there are some
> > extracted tests that shouldn't be translated since they are "commands" ?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> >    Albert
> 
> I agree that top posting should be avoided :)
> 
> The topic was started by me, the Dutch translator of &rkward; . I
> encountered (one so far) message string which is way to long, covering
> more than two A-4 pages when copied into LibreOffice. I did not count
> the number of lines, too difficult for me.
> 
> Said message string was in rkwardplugin.po, a very difficult to
> translate .po file as it is already, and encountering a complete
> docstring file is a very unnerving experience.
> 
> I asked what can be done about this, suggesting that such monster
> messages be divided into a number of smaller ones.
> 
> Of course a translator can do this himself, but I think that translating
> should be made as comfortable for the tens, or even hundreds of
> translators around the world.
> 
> Another suggestion, from Thomas Friedrichsmeier, who reacted very
> sympathetically to my mail, is that somehow  should be made clear to
> translators what to translate, and what not. It is very easy to
> translate the given code examples into chunks of unworkable rubbish,
> which is not what anyone wants.
> 
> My suggestion is to use another colour of font (I said letter, but I
> guess it should be font) for text which must not be translated.
> 
> Myself I have an idea what should be left alone and what not, having
> some programming experience, but I am quite certain most translators don't.
> 
> I hope you are now informed (as far as I am), and hope your cry for not
> top posting will be honoured :)
> 
> As I am new to this forum, let me introduce myself:
> 
> Jaap Woldringh, Dutch, retired math teacher, dabbling with programmable
> HP RPN calculators from 1976, with micro computers from 1981 (Acorn
> Atom, BBC-B), and with programming in Fortran (self taught, brrrr,
> Pascal, Basic, FORTH, and so on, and some knowledge of the more modern
> programming languages, latest one is Python. As a math teacher I don't
> program: I only make little programs for mathematical problems, so I am
> not really a programmer.
> 
> I translate into Dutch a number of mathematical programs, mostly kdeedu,
> for more than 10 years now, though I don't use the KDE-dsktop anymore
> since they moved from KDE3 (perfect for me) to KDE4 and later, not so
> perfect.
> 
> Greetings from
> 
> Jaap Woldringh


Hi,

Just 2 cents from the guy that have already translated all this (it tooks more 
than month but the long way can be parted by some small steps).

1. rkwardplugins is the third largest KDE documentation after digiKam and 
Amarok. It is inevitable that in such a large file the length of the messages 
has almost exponential ditribution. Yes there are two or three _really_ large 
messages, but there are many small (one word) messages that can be easily 
grabbed from the translation memory. I have completed ~400 messages of 1270 
just during the first day.

2. The initial version has some shotcommings with huge messages which include 
non-parted lists. The problem was solved by slight modification of the DocBook 
code which allows fine breaking of such messages.

3. It can be easily found that the "message of irritation" is tagged with 
"programlisting" (can be seen from the Lokalize sidebar). Most of such 
messages are the programming code where it is suffuce to translate the comments 
(actually, the easiest part of the translation).

4. The message at hand is unique (an example of the rkh help file). There is 
nothing we can do with such messages without AI. Who else can know what should 
be translated in the program code and what should not?

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Yuri