discuss: Translation effort workflow
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Translation effort workflow
From:
####@####.####
Date:
9 Oct 2005 19:11:42 -0000
Message-Id: <20051009191137.GA30303@tigreraye.nulle.part>
Le 2005-10-10 01:41:11 +0800, Alex Nordstrom écrivait :
> I am the maintainer of the Documentation Workgroup of the Linux Society
> of Sweden, a nonprofit organisation with over 2,500 members from all
> over Sweden with an interest in Free and open source software. We are
> currently in the process of reviving an effort to translate LDP Howto
> documents into Swedish.
I am the current coordinator of the French howto translation project.
Our web site is: http://www.traduc.org (unfortunately, only in French).
I'm going to add some comments to your text based on the experience of
the French howto translation project.
> This is the procedure for translating a document from the Linux
> Documentation Project (LDP) for the Linux Society of Sweden.
>
>
> Choose A Document
>
> Choose a document which you wish to translate. You may choose a document
> from the wishlist on the homepage of the Documentation Workgroup[1].
> These are prioritised because they are up to date and useful to many.
> You may also choose another document. LDP has a list of the most
> recently updated documents[2]. The important thing is that you enjoy
> the translation work, so choose something that interests you, but do
> keep in mind that preferring reasonably up to date documents is
> advantageous.
>
> [1] http://se.linux.org/arbetsgrupper/dokumentation
> [2] http://tldp.org/sorted_howtos.html
>
> Read the document (at least superficially) and assess whether you want
> to translate it. Read the document's licence and ensure that
> translation is permitted. All documents from LDP may be distributed,
> but some may only be distributed unaltered.
I might be a good idea to ask the translator to look for an existing
translation using for example google. This could also be done by the
coordinator. This could avoid an already translated document to be
translated again.
> Announce Your Interest
>
> Send a message to the maintainer of the Documentation Workgroup[3] and
> state the name of the document and your willingness to translate it.
>
> [3] ####@####.####
>
> Translators are often encouraged to contact the original author of the
> original. Sometimes, this is even phrased as a licence requirement for
> publishing a translation. If contacting the original author is a
> licence requirement, the maintainer of the Documentation Workgroup will
> handle this.
>
> If no one else is working on the document, you will most likely be told
> to go ahead with the translation. If the original author has demanded
> to be contacted, you will also be notified of what they replied.
>
> If contacting the original author is only a request, you should heed it
> once you have been told to go ahead by the Documentation Workgroup. The
> author can often tell you about ongoing work which may affect
> translations. Such information can save you a lot of unnecessary work.
> Therefore, it may be good to contact the author, even if there is no
> such demand or request.
We had a long discussion over this with the LDP (in the person of Emma
Jane Hogbin). Further to this, we now have taken the policy to require
our translators to always contact the author, whether this is required
or not.
If this is not mandatory, in the end, author will get the impression
that they are not informed of the work done on their documents. The
translator might also miss a crucial information about an upcoming
update. Also, the translator might miss the fact that there is an
already existing translation.
> Start Translating
>
> If possible, perform the translation in source code format. This is not
> as scary as it sounds. LDP uses two document formats as a basis for
> automatically generating standardised documents in several different
> formats. These two formats are Linuxdoc and Docbook.
>
> Linuxdoc and Docbook are two XML variants for adding tags to a text
> which describe its structure. The differences between the formats are
> not that major, and they are also pretty similar to, for example, HTML,
> which is used to describe Web pages. One does not need to master
> Linuxdoc or Docbook fully to carry out a translation. As a translator,
> one rarely needs to make many changes to the document's structure, and
> one can therefore largely rely on the original document's markup.
>
> Which format one should use depends on what the original document uses.
> The source code of the LDP Howto documents is in their version control
> system[4]. The catalogues linuxdoc and docbook contain documents
> written in the respective formats.
>
> [4] http://cvsview.tldp.org/index.cgi/LDP/howto/
>
> If you find Linuxdoc or Docbook too difficult, it is not the end of the
> world. Simply translate the text of the original document, and other
> volunteers in the Documentation Workgroup will add markup to the
> document. Do note, however, that this may mean that your document does
> not get to benefit the general public quite as quickly.
This is not a good idea. Taking the text and putting it back in DocBook
or LinuxDoc is a huge work, while translating in source format is only
slightly more work for the translator. It will also be more difficult to
find volunteers for that, as it is a very boring job.
If the translator does not want to work in source format, he should work
with a tool that can generate DocBook or LinuxDoc (maybe an HTML
editor, as HTML can be converted to DocBook).
> Submit the Document for Review
>
> Send in the result of your work as an attachment to the maintainer of
> the Documentation Workgroup[5] for review. The language of your
> translation will be reviewed. This process will be faster if you have
> read through the document yourself and used automatic spellchecking.
> The translation will also be read alongside the original to verify the
> integrity of its factual content.
The translator should also use tools like xmllint (for XML DocBook) to
check that the document is properly structured.
Apart for these comments, we are more or less going along the same
lines.
Thanks!
--
Jean-Philippe Guérard
French Howto translation coordinator
http://www.traduc.org
