Pootle engagement with Mozilla

l10n
#1

Hi,

Please read this blog post:
http://translate.org.za/blogs/dwayne/en/content/better-faster-more-lovely-pootle-thanks-mozilla

Let's discuss, if we, the LibreOffice l10n community have feature or
bugfix requests. If they fit within Mozilla's scope then with our help
they may be implemented.

Best regards,
Andras

#2

Looks good.

However as translator I'd like to use transifex because of some really good tools. Unfortunately, it has one huge weakness: it's no so suitable for scope project. But some projects like Fedora uses it. Probably we should at least try it.

As for me Pootle is slower and less modern than Transifex. What do you say?

#3

Hi,

2012-05-03 21:37, Коростіль Данило rašė:

As for me Pootle is slower and less modern than Transifex. What do you say?

Have you checked ut the beta?

Rimas

#4

Hi,

Please read this blog post:
http://translate.org.za/blogs/dwayne/en/content/better-faster-more-lovely-pootle-thanks-mozilla

Let's discuss, if we, the LibreOffice l10n community have feature or
bugfix requests. If they fit within Mozilla's scope then with our help
they may be implemented.

Best regards,
Andras

Great news, Andras
I hope the best

Transifex is a good tool, of course, but it centralice all. It's a serious risk

#5

No. Is it speeded up?

#6

The developers of Transifex have actually caught up with Pootle in some
places, but it's still an awkward tool to work with. So, my suggestion for
people who want to use it is to set up their own local server or something.
The Pootle installation on the other hand need more resources to cope with
load.

Regards,

Olav Dahlum

#7

5/3/2012 10:03 PM, Коростіль Данило rašė:

Have you checked ut the beta?

No. Is it speeded up?

I'd say it is, at least visually. IIRC, much more is done using AJAX than in the current version.

Rimas

#8

Þann fim 3.maí 2012 18:37, skrifaði Коростіль Данило:

Hi,

Please read this blog post:
http://translate.org.za/blogs/dwayne/en/content/better-faster-more-lovely-pootle-thanks-mozilla

Let's discuss, if we, the LibreOffice l10n community have
feature or
bugfix requests. If they fit within Mozilla's scope then
with our help
they may be implemented.

Best regards,
Andras

Looks good.

However as translator I'd like to use transifex because of
some really good tools. Unfortunately, it has one huge
weakness: it's no so suitable for scope project. But some
projects like Fedora uses it. Probably we should at least
try it.

As for me Pootle is slower and less modern than Transifex.
What do you say?

Hi,

As someone regularly using most of the tools employed for
FOSS translations (even the (t)rusty old email robot of
translationproject.org):

As a coordinator, often doing site-wide streamlining and
spell-checking, I appreciate the easy download/upload of
folder structures in Pootle. A bit slow at times, occasional
freezes, but overall the experience is good.
Even if it does not really bother in my case, I can see
tools in Transifex quite useful for other bigger teams; such
as file-locking and per-file messages.

As a translator, Transifex may win by a small margin; a bit
more snappy, a little more information on each page. I also
like having the download field in each file row (easier when
submitting several files in a folder).
But I think those are minimal differences.

Also, it may be just an imagination, but I have the feeling
that there's more (often) downtime on Transifex-based
services than Pootle-based. This is just an unsupported
feeling, of course.

Haven't really fiddled with the betas.
And to be clear, I usually translate offline.

Best regards,
Sveinn í Felli

#9

The part that needs most improvement is the search. Right now it's
abysmally bad.

Then it would be nice to have things like suggested fuzzy matches,
tag/variable highlighting in the _translation_ not only in the source
and some more quality checks (especially consistency checks).

#10

Hi Andras et al,
We in the Danish project uses Pootle on line. I have a few suggestions to improvements:

  * Better search facilities, e.g., regular expressions
  * Ability to search or filter a subset e.g., to see only the latest
    updated strings.
  * A way to avoid to approve my own translations (thats our overall
    rule in the Danish community never to translate and approve by the
    same person)
  * Log or history per string. It would be nice to know who translated,
    changed and approved a string.

Leif Lodahl
The Danish Team

#11

Þann fim 3.maí 2012 18:37, skrifaði Коростіль Данило:

Hi,

Please read this blog post:
http://translate.org.za/blogs/dwayne/en/content/better-faster-more-lovely-pootle-thanks-mozilla

Let's discuss, if we, the LibreOffice l10n community have
feature or
bugfix requests. If they fit within Mozilla's scope then
with our help
they may be implemented.

Best regards,
Andras

BTW;

Does anyone know about the status of the serious complaint
towards Transifex (and Pootle?) for not keeping the Gettext
headers intact (even replacing them)?

This makes it impossible to keep track of (former)
translators. Some would even say it's a plain violation of
most licenses.

Best regards,
Sveinn í Felli

Examples:
<https://github.com/transifex/transifex/issues/16>
<http://bugs.locamotion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37>
and
<http://bugs.locamotion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=893>

#12

It still strips the headers to my knowledge. Yes, it's clearly in violation
with the code of conduct for translation work, so fixing this should be a
top priority for their respective developers (some subtle threats to phase
out their solutions in projects might work, as this problem was painfully
obvious back in 2010 as well).

– Olav

#13

Þann fim 3.maí 2012 18:37, skrifaði Коростіль Данило:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Please read this blog post:
>>

http://translate.org.za/blogs/dwayne/en/content/better-faster-more-lovely-pootle-thanks-mozilla

>>
>>
>> Let's discuss, if we, the LibreOffice l10n community have
>> feature or
>> bugfix requests. If they fit within Mozilla's scope then
>> with our help
>> they may be implemented.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Andras
>>

BTW;

Does anyone know about the status of the serious complaint
towards Transifex (and Pootle?) for not keeping the Gettext
headers intact (even replacing them)?

This makes it impossible to keep track of (former)
translators. Some would even say it's a plain violation of
most licenses.

Best regards,
Sveinn í Felli

Examples:
<https://github.com/transifex/transifex/issues/16>
<http://bugs.locamotion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37>
and
<http://bugs.locamotion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=893>

It still strips the headers to my knowledge. Yes, it's clearly in

violation

with the code of conduct for translation work, so fixing this should be a
top priority for their respective developers (some subtle threats to phase
out their solutions in projects might work, as this problem was painfully
obvious back in 2010 as well).

Dimitris Glezos, a Transifex developer replied to Fedora l10n mailinglist
on 6/2/2011:

Since last week, the translation information *is* added on the PO

headers. This information is stored on a resource-language level. A
couple of examples can already be seen live:

https://www.transifex.net/projects/p/transifex/resource/txo/l/pt_BR/download/

https://www.transifex.net/projects/p/anaconda/resource/master/l/zh_CN/download/

The copyright information is created with the following ways:

1. When translating online using the Web Editor, your name is added on the
  copyright header. To show your full name you need to define it under your
  Transifex Profile page.
2. When uploading a PO file, Transifex will parse the header and try to
find
  translator's names. Any names which do not exist in its database, will be
  added.

To populate the database with past copyright information, we have created a
script which will add as much information that was found in the Fedora
archives.

You can also manually add copyright information by downloading a PO file,
adding the copyright headers by hand and re-uploading.

In my opinion, I believe Transifex is much convenient for translators to
work with po files within my 2-year-long free software translation
experience.
The easier the tools, the happier the translators are.

By the way, does Poolte list suggestions or search results in numbers per
page instead of giving me one result each time in new versions?
It is so painful for me to find some translated phrases easily or review
translation suggestions these days. :S

#14

Yes it uses AJAX quite a bit, implements TM from a central TM server and does quite a lot to consolidate and unify the translation tasks. Things like filtering for certain check failure and finding certain types of translations.

A number of sites use the beta version. But being conservative we haven't pushed this out as official. We'll be actively using the beta for the Firefox translations so that we have a controlled environment where the devs are actively involved. And we'll get this out as an official release with Mozilla.

#15

The beta does, so yes. Our concern is that you lose the context of the surrounding strings and in many cases context is the only thing you have to make sure you choose the right words. So we supply that context as needed when filtering: search, type of string, check failure.

#16

We don't strip anything in fact we've always tried really hard to update the header and minimise diffs that header updates could cause.

We do in fact try to update the real comment header, as opposed to the PO header, with translator information so that you have some track record of when and who translated. Since the PO header is to be quite honest useless as a track record for historic rights or contributor information.

Having said that there are many ways to interact with Pootle. Translate online, upload PO files, overwrite, merge. We could easily be getting this wrong in the instance or workflow that you follow. So the way to help us to be a little more specific about what doesn't happen and what you expect to happen. Showing us the PO files before, after and how you'd expect it to happen are a great help and save us a load of time trying to guess.

#17

Hi Andras et al,
We in the Danish project uses Pootle on line. I have a few suggestions to improvements:

* Better search facilities, e.g., regular expressions

This depends on the search backend, but this seems to be a regular theme here. So thanks for that.

* Ability to search or filter a subset e.g., to see only the latest
   updated strings.

Yes we can in beta. The checks, search and state of strings will give you a subset on which you can work.

* A way to avoid to approve my own translations (thats our overall
   rule in the Danish community never to translate and approve by the
   same person)

I'd be curious to know how you are doing this now and to think a little about it. Maybe send me a mail offlist and we can discuss.

* Log or history per string. It would be nice to know who translated,
   changed and approved a string.

That's on our scope for the Mozilla work.

#18

Hi,

Please read this blog post:
http://translate.org.za/blogs/dwayne/en/content/better-faster-more-lovely-pootle-thanks-mozilla

Let's discuss, if we, the LibreOffice l10n community have feature or
bugfix requests. If they fit within Mozilla's scope then with our help
they may be implemented.

Best regards,
Andras

The part that needs most improvement is the search. Right now it's
abysmally bad.

Then it would be nice to have things like suggested fuzzy matches,

We have a Translation Memory server called Amagama giving matches for almost all FOSS projects: *office, gnome, KDE, etc. Those who translate offline using Virtaal are already befitting from that. That is integrated into the next iteration of Pootle.

tag/variable highlighting in the _translation_ not only in the source

Nice, I also want that. Not sure it is on our scope though.

and some more quality checks (especially consistency checks).

We already have a lot of quality checks. By consistency do you mean something like check that I have translated X as Y consistently? We have tools for doing that offline, but online in Pootle :frowning:

I'm not sure how many people use the Terminology suggestion feature of Pootle? That helps a lot of teams maintain consistency.

But back to checks. If you have ideas for reducing false positives, new checks, or improving checks then please let us know. They are not that hard to write but even if you can express them in a simple pseudo code taking source and target text then we can quite easily implement them.

#19

It really useful stuff. Thanks for that. It's reason why I use Virtaal by default. Are you going to improve Virtaal? Here is only two really painful things why I don't like Virtaal:
1) So slow. It's quite good for small files. But when it's over 4000 strings it takes long time to open and save.
2) Weird thing, but there is no ratio of strings (translated, fuzzy, total).

Transifex is really good for collaboration: I can see all translated string by certain user. Do you have this option in beta? It's useful to track newbies translators works and fix mistakes on the fly. Moreover, it's quite useful to coordinate that huge projects like Mozilla and LibreOffice, where number of translators are more than one and strings are more than 10k.

#20

Op Ma, 2012-05-07 om 14:50 +0300 skryf Коростіль Данило:

> We have a Translation Memory server called Amagama giving matches
for
> almost all FOSS projects: *office, gnome, KDE, etc. Those who
> translate offline using Virtaal are already befitting from that.
That
> is integrated into the next iteration of Pootle.
It really useful stuff. Thanks for that. It's reason why I use
Virtaal
by default. Are you going to improve Virtaal? Here is only two really
painful things why I don't like Virtaal:
1) So slow. It's quite good for small files. But when it's over 4000
strings it takes long time to open and save.
2) Weird thing, but there is no ratio of strings (translated, fuzzy,
total).

Which version of Virtaal are you using? From your comment (2) I guess it
is before 0.7. With version 0.7, you can go to File -> Properties to see
statistics like those (as strings, or as words).

Version 0.7 also improved performance in a few areas. Hopefully an
upgrade is all you need. If not, feel free to add the file (or a URL) in
a bug report so that a developer can have a look at why it is slow:
http://bugs.locamotion.org/

Keep well
Friedel