Re: Translation

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Re: Translation
by Morty on Friday 24/Jun/2005, @16:38

Translating applications are NOT simply about changing strings to a new language, it is not that easy. And you also have to do testing and debugging of your translation, which imply actually running it with the translation. Spend some time reading the translation mailinglist and you would see.

But if you really want to use those twenty minutes of yours helping with translation of KDE, it's easier than with any wiki out there. You translate the documentation, it's the most neglected or lowest priority part of the translations too. As for the easy part, you only have to supply the text. The language maintainers will gladly help with markup, and integrating it into the correct place in svn. Since its' only text you can even write it directly in your e-mail client if you like, and send it to the appropriate maintainer.

Related Links

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Re: Translation
by Andre on Friday 24/Jun/2005, @18:05

At a wiki you can edit it on the fly. html editing is also easys but the wiki way means, you see an error and just correct it.

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Re: Translation
by rinse on Saturday 25/Jun/2005, @05:57

Hi can edit on the fly, that is true, but only when you are writing documentations.
Not when you create translations of documentations.
An initial translation in a wiki is quite easy, but keeping it up to date according to changes in the English version is not.
For example, if the English author changes 6 words in a document containing 25.000 words, in order to reflect GUI-changes in the next release of KDE, how is the translator supposed to find those changes in his translation?

If you look at wikipedia.org you will notice that most localised articles are not translations of the original English versions, most of the time they are rewrites that contain some, but not all, of the information that is available in the English version, most of the times complemented with information that is of interest to the audience of that language.

And again, most translated documents on wikipedia.org are outdated or contain less information then their English counterpart.
If wiki is so great for translating, why can't wikipedia (with a much larger audience then localised kde-versions) keep up the pace???

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Re: Translation
by Andre on Saturday 25/Jun/2005, @08:11

I don't mean document editing via a wiki which might be a good proposal.

I mean the principle of wiki: low entrance barrier for participation.

> And again, most translated documents on wikipedia.org are outdated or contain less information then their English counterpart.

German articles are usually independend from the English ones, not translations of their English counterparts.

> An initial translation in a wiki is quite easy, but keeping it up to date according to changes in the English version is not.

Diffs are your friend.

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Re: Translation
by Rinse on Saturday 25/Jun/2005, @21:06

>I mean the principle of wiki: low entrance barrier for participation.

Not suitable for translating software
You need some barrier, in order to maintain quality.

>Diffs are your friend.
No, they are not :)
Not when it comes to translations..
using diffs would mean that you need 3 files, the old English file, the new English file, and the translation.
Not very usefull...

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Re: Translation
by david on Monday 27/Jun/2005, @00:44

>>I mean the principle of wiki: low entrance barrier for participation.

>Not suitable for translating software
>You need some barrier, in order to maintain quality.

Equally unsuitable for an encyclopeadia then, since you need to maintain quality there too.

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Re: Translation
by rinse on Monday 27/Jun/2005, @00:56

Well, you should at least keep in mind that a wiki encyclopeadia could contain errros.
But the difference between an wiki encyclopeadia and is that the lather uses instant publishing. You read the article, you notice an error, you change it, and it gets published as soon as you hit the 'publish' button (or similar)

This is not the case with software documentation, if you find an error and correct it, the improved docs won't be available until the next version of the application, which could take 6 months or even longer (depending on the release cycle the application uses...)

So in short, while a wiki encyclopeadia with a large audience would quite fast gain in quality, it would take a lot longer before software documentation would reach the same quality level if it was translated in the same way.

Also, users who don't upgrade everytime a new version of the application comes out, will be using the documentation with errors for a very long time..

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Re: Translation
by ac on Monday 27/Jun/2005, @04:40

That's indeed commonly claimed to be a weakness of wikis.

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