Session Notes

Roundtable session to discuss the status of the Ubuntu translations community, possible improvements, etc.

Feedback on the last cycle:
 * general pleasure with progress. 
 * now need to build out ubuntu translator team and find folks with experience in various languages: arabic, chinese, korean. not much knowledge of arabic script.
 * have documented much in wiki - this facilitates new folks joining/working

 * there still are folks who find it difficult to get started, both with setting up software for i18n and using lp to participate in Ubuntu translation activities. Asked:
  * where can one find out extent of support for given language in ubuntu? hard question to answer because what does "support" mean. There are overall per language statistics in LP and other data. 
  * How can we translate books? maybe launchpad.net:doctemplate + Rosetta?
 
 * 9.10 release notes were the first to include info about ubuntu translation status
 * (translating release notes is a tough problem since it is in a wiki, but it is done. use doctemplate? :) ) .
 
 * Possible improvements: translations of release notes
  * Launchpad could be better place than the wiki page since syncing with 'top page' changes needs moinmoin usage understanding and manual copy-pasting
  * We should look at filtering out languages which are not visible on Launchpad from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/ReleaseLanguages/9.10

 * Language pack updates:
  * Stable releases: -how do we track how many users use e.g. Jaunty? How useful can language pack updates be for that release?
  * LTS: updates on every point release? - on demand as well?
  * Older stable releases? Jaunty? Hardy at least as well.
    * If there's no proactive push from users/translators, I feel we should not generate them. - Danilo
    * Mirv says on IRC that eg. Hardy updates have been delayed far too much in the past. Procedure is unclear on how it should be pushed for.  How about more on-demand based language packs? (Yes, please! - Danilo :)
    * Could we think about adding a section in wiki with headings like "How do I..." and then at least now this "request a language pack update for a language", and whatever else we happen to come up with. Could be expanded whenever there are FAQ-like questions from the community (is the current Launchpad-using FAQ page modifiable by all of us?)
  * PPA info: we should probably add info to the wiki page about how to request a language pack update
  
  There was some discussion at this UDS about an update doc that would summarize major changes and be dispayed on update. This would need to be translated too. A similar, well-automated approach for release notes and update notes (if they exists) would be benficial.

== Conclusions ==

Language pack decision:
 * weekly update on Jaunty and Karmic
 * document procedure for pushing language packs into updates/proposed (mail the mailing list)

Release notes:
 * translate them after release as well
 * look into how we can have them in Launchpad

 * ArchiveReorg, upstream integration and translations: do we want to enable universe translations at some point?
   * General consensus is that we should come back to universe translations for Lucid+1
   * Archive reorg will affect only Lucid+1 as well
 * UNE (Ubuntu Netbook Edition)
   *  Translate upstream first (https://translations.launchpad.net/unr), will flow down to Ubuntu
 * Ubuntu translator tools project (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-translator-tools, lp tools...); see bug 457229
 * Testing translations early in the development cycle - when do we want to open translations (on the web UI) for Lucid?
   * Lucid is already set-up in Launchpad, they are just "closed" for translation still
   * what about partial opening, for example no GNOME/KDE yet? -Mirv (lessen problems regarding double work wrt upstream); technically very  involved (Danilo). ok.
   * Do we want to open translations this early? Not many users of Lucid, we want translations to happen upstream first.  Consensus is no.
   * Suggested date of opening: Alpha-2, Alpha-3...
   * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidReleaseSchedule
     * String freezes:
       * GNOME 2.30: February 22nd, 2010 (http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentynine)
       * KDE 4.4: November 25th, 2009 (http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.4_Release_Schedule)
       * Xfce 4.8: March 1, 2010 ( http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.8/schedule ), Xubuntu may stay with 4.6 for the Lucid release. Will discuss w/Xubuntu team & make announcement.
     * We want to open translations after Alpha-3
     * Lucid language packs will be released on Dec 17th as per the schedule
     * ACTION: David to add it to the release schedule
     * ACTION: Adi to add an FAQ entry on the rationale for this decision
 * Uploads to -proposed can modify templates, but what to do with the template if the upload is rejected for -updates? We could add a note on translations to StableReleaseUploads
   * ACTION: David to add a warning about this to SRU page.
 * ISO codes translations (https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+source/iso-codes)
   * Used in: language-selector (but not through language packs) uses iso-639-2 directly from upstream
   * Consensus is: export them into language packs as long as anything is using them (eg. Epiphany).
   * ACTION: David to talk to Arne about this
 * Disabling templates and storing translations in a public space (we should also remove them after some time)
   * When templates are disabled (eg. demoted from main to universe) we still want to let people to submit them upstream
   * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/Upstream/Universe
   * ACTION: David to talk to IS to get a common account for the UTC team on people.ubuntu.com
 * packages.ubuntu.com home page translations
   * Maintainer of Debian is supporting the Ubuntu page as well
   * ACTION: someone to look into Launchpad integration
 * Failsafe X dialogs waiting for an implementation, should be targetted for lucid (bug #335678)
 * Software Center: app-install-data is being replaced by a repository-based index. I discussed a bit about that the existing translations should be migrated, which was agreed. The whole thing, together with translations, will become quite complicated anyway.

== Overview of changes in Lucid ==

 * Improving distro translation status reporting
 * Ubuntu translations project structure (drafting of policies and best practices)
 * UTC team structure (documentation of cordination actions and processes)
 * Browser start page localisation, ubuntu.com, help.ubuntu.com
 * Launchpad - upstream integration and developer community participation
 * Kubuntu translation improvements
 * Firefox translation improvements
 * OpenOffice.org translation 
 * Language selector changes

CategoryTranslations