1 <dpm> and hi everyone
   2 <dpm> time to to have some more training action to get ready for the Global Jam!
   3 <dpm> Today it's...
   4 <dpm> Translations!
   5 <dpm> Let's see who's here
   6 <mhall119|work> o/
   7 <pecisk> \o
   8 <dpm> askhl, I hear you are in the Danish team :), are you guys going to have a translations jam as well?
   9 <dpm> hey mhall119|work, heya pecisk :)
  10 <pecisk> hey man
  11 <pecisk> :)
  12 <dpm> Is any of you guys going to have a translations jam during the UGJ?
  13 <mhall119|work> I don't think so
  14 <pecisk> definitely
  15 <dpm> fantastic
  16 <dpm> First, let me just quickly remind everyone about the Jam and the dates
  17 <dpm> You'll find all the info you need on
  18 <dpm> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam
  19 <dpm> The jam is going to be from the 26th to the 28th of March, and if you're going to run a jam, remember to add it there:
  20 <dpm> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam/Events
  21 <mhall119|work> and here: http://loco.ubuntu.com
  22 <dpm> nice mhall119|work, thanks!
  23 <dpm> (remember you can translate the LoCo Directory too!)
  24 <mhall119|work> yes please
  25 <dpm> hey kelemengabor, hey markjones, are the Hungarian and Welsh teams going to run a translations jam too? :)
  26 <dpm> (btw, here's the link to translate the LoCo Directory: https://translations.launchpad.net/loco-directory)
  27 <kelemengabor> dpm: not sure, only 3 people said that they would come :(
  28 <pecisk> there is still time to reconsider :)
  29 <kelemengabor> perhaps you can tell, how should I motivate people to come :)
  30 <dpm> 3 translators can translate a lot of stuff, perhaps some other people can attend remotely
  31 <markjones> dpm: if there's enough interest and I have time to arrange it
  32 * pecisk have about three active members in a team and somehow we are doing ok :)
  33 <dpm> kelemengabor, sometimes setting goals for a Jam helps to motivate people, for example:
  34 <dpm> * To have ubuntu-docs or kubuntu-docs fully translated after the jam
  35 <dpm> * To have the Ubuntu Slideshow in the installer fully translated after the jam
  36 <dpm> * To have all the applications in the first page of http://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu translated
  37 <dpm> * To translate the package descriptions of the Featured category in Software Center
  38 <dpm> * etc.
  39 <dpm> You should definitely check out Nightmonkey if you are setting a goal for translations of package descriptions. I'm sure kelemengabor can only talk wonders about it :)
  40 <pecisk> those translations are huge :)
  41 <dpm> For those who don't yet know it, I talked about Nightmonkey some days ago: http://davidplanella.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/translating-software-descriptions-with-nightmonkey/
  42 <dpm> pecisk, yeah, that's where a tool like NM comes handy
  43 <dpm> so you can easily find the most important things to translate
  44 <dpm> and focus the little spare time we have on really visible translations :)
  45 <umi> dpm: does NM help you to find out if you should translate the package in Rosetta or in the upstream?
  46 <dpm> umi, NM is used not to translate applications, but the descriptions of applications. These are the strings that are shown, for example, in Software Center when you look at an app. There is only one updtream for those translations, and that is Debian
  47 <dpm> and NM implements functionality to send them back upstream
  48 <umi> dpm: ok, sounds good
  49 <umi> thank you
  50 <dpm> umi, you're welcome. You'll find more info on Ubuntu Translations and upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/Upstream
  51 <dpm> perhaps that can help
  52 <dpm> Anyway, I see some translations people around, but let's talk a bit about how translating ubuntu works, for the benefit of folks who are new to translations
  53 <dpm> In any case, I want to keep the conversation going and not let this be a "formal" training session, so please, feel free to chip in and ask questions or share your experiences from past jams, if you have already been in one
  54 <dpm> we'll focus on translations, but as translations are only a part of the jam, most of your experiences probably apply to all kind of jams.
  55 <dpm> Anyway, the important part to remember, the message here, is that you're jamming to have fun,
  56 <dpm> and to make Ubuntu rock along the way.
  57 <dpm> Translation jams are very special: you're meeting to make Ubuntu accessible to thousands of people in your language.
  58 <dpm> For some teams it even means, it is the only OS in which they can have their language available.
  59 <dpm> As some of you might know, translation in Ubuntu is made possible through the wonderful Ubuntu translation teams:
  60 <dpm> https://translations.launchpad.net/+groups/ubuntu-translators
  61 <dpm> The members of those teams are the people responsible for reviewing and submitting translations through Launchpad:
  62 <dpm> https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu
  63 *** jamalta-afk is now known as jamalta
  64 <dpm> Before or after the Jam is a good time to get involved in those teams, and perhaps apply to join them.
  65 <dpm> But do not worry: everyone can submit translation suggestions without having to be in one of the translation teams,
  66 <dpm> so that you can contribute easily since day 1.
  67 <dpm> The members of the translation team will act as reviewers to see that your suggestion is ok, doesn't contain any typos, etc.
  68 <dpm> So it's important to get in touch with them once you've done a bunch of suggestions,
  69 <dpm> so that they are aware of them, and they can give you some feedback.
  70 <dpm> This feedback will greatly help you on your way to becoming an Ubuntu translator
  71 <dpm> It is always a good thing to make sure there is at least a member of the Launchpad translation team at the Jam,
  72 <dpm> be it physically or remotely,
  73 <dpm> so that he or she can accept translation suggestions on the spot, or provide some feedback for improvements.
  74 <dpm> But don't worry if no one from the translations team in Launchpad can turn up: you can contact them later on to give them a heads up on the bunch of suggestions you'll have done during the Jam :)
  75 <dpm> so they can review them
  76 <dpm> So, do get in touch with them before and after the Jam
  77 <dpm> You'll find the team for your language at:
  78 <dpm> https://translations.launchpad.net/+groups/ubuntu-translators
  79 <dpm> with info on how you can contact them
  80 <dpm> If there isn't a team for your language, you might want to start one:
  81 <dpm> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/KnowledgeBase/StartingTeam
  82 <dpm> The other useful thing in a Translations Jam, as I was mentioning earlier, is to set up goals
  83 <dpm> So you might want to set up a goal for translating a particular application, to review all pending suggestions in your language, to fully translate Ubuntu Docs... you name it
  84 <dpm> Gobby (apt-get install gobby) or a wiki can be very useful in coordinating these goals
  85 <dpm> err, 'sudo apt-get install gobby'
  86 <dpm> and writing down which translations are ready and need review, who is in charge of which translation, etc.
  87 <dpm> how are you guys in translation teams coordinating translations? Most of the teams I think use the wiki
  88 <kelemengabor> the wiki is the simplest, we have this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HungarianTeam/TranslationCoordination
  89 <dpm> yeah, we use the wiki as well in the Catalan team
  90 <dpm> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuCatalanTranslators/Llistat
  91 <dpm> during the jam it is also useful to use something more dynamic you can edit on the spot, so gobby or any other collaborative tool come in very handy
  92 <dpm> Coming back to the goals, just a note:
  93 <dpm> In my experience, though, you shouldn't get too fixed on these goals: it's fantastic to achieve them, but
  94 <dpm> sometimes in jams you get a lot of new people coming along,
  95 <dpm> and you spend quite a lot of time telling them about Ubuntu, about how the translations process goes, etc.
  96 <dpm> So you just have to remember that this training, more social part is also very important.
  97 <dpm> It is very rewarding to get new contributors to your translation team,
  98 <dpm> to allow users in your language to have a much better localized experience
  99 <dpm> and it's fun, too :)
 100 <dpm> Ok, I think that was most of what I wanted to cover for today
 101 <dpm> Does anyone have any questions? Or would you like to share some experiences from previous jams you've been to?
 102 <kelemengabor> yep
 103 <kelemengabor> we did some jams since 2007
 104 <pecisk> hardest is to nail terminology
 105 <dpm> wow, we've got some veterans here :)
 106 <kelemengabor> and my experience was that lots of people came once, and this was about the last time we heard from them
 107 <kelemengabor> and with time, less and less
 108 <kelemengabor> I guess that this was because we (ok, I) saw the events
 109 <dpm> pecisk, actually, that's a good point: a Jam can also be a good opportunity to work on translation guidelines or terminology
 110 <pecisk> and grammar rules, because sometimes you have specific rules to translated sentence parts
 111 <kelemengabor> like "we do something extraordinary with the help of the community"
 112 <pecisk> yeah, because you can translate alone and that's fine, but it is rather hard to coordinate grammar/term efforts trough net
 113 <kelemengabor> but this seems not to work
 114 <pecisk> kelemengabor: well, I fully agree, and I have understood why it is so
 115 <pecisk> translation is hard, good translation is very hard
 116 <kelemengabor> sure
 117 <pecisk> in my country even commercial translations are usually so screwed up
 118 <kelemengabor> and asking people to come and work hard is not a good idea :(
 119 <pecisk> well
 120 <pecisk> that's why we aim this usually at very young and patriotic people
 121 <pecisk> who have lot of time and actually a change to believe idea
 122 <dpm> kelemengabor, what about people from the LoCo not usually working on translations? In the last jam, we had people not generally contributing to translations but to other areas. We all together managed to translate the ubiquity slideshow. Some of them have not translated since then, but there'll be coming back to help out a bit again
 123 <pecisk> kelemengabor: also I can suggest to involve newcomers at translation testing first
 124 <dpm> kelemengabor, another idea is to combine the activities. Testing and Upgrading jams are "lighter" than e.g. packaging jams
 125 <kelemengabor> we had some time ago such people on jams, but they lost their interest in translation
 126 <kelemengabor> so they stick to their usual activities
 127 <dpm> and combining the activities may help people trying new stuff
 128 <kelemengabor> well, that may work...
 129 <dpm> pecisk's has a good point as well, getting people identifying errors or untranslated strings might help as well.
 130 <dpm> it's relatively easy - although I know the hard part then is to make them translatable if it's a bug :)
 131 <kelemengabor> but I'm not a tester, and I don't know if there are people in my LoCo that are familiar with that
 132 <kelemengabor> hm, translation testing is good too
 133 <kelemengabor> I think the last time we did something like this
 134 <pecisk> yeah, because it is good way to make them see that it makes sense
 135 <kelemengabor> the job was to read the official docs and find errors in it
 136 <pecisk> usually commercial apps are badly translated and everyone ends up using english version anyway
 137 <pecisk> but if you show people that they can actually improve things
 138 <pecisk> instead of trashing
 139 <pecisk> it works nicely
 140 <dpm> that's why we love Open Source :)
 141 <pecisk> exactly
 142 <umi> and it's a good chance to show the newcomers that they should feel responsibility about the quality of their translations
 143 <pecisk> that's too :)
 144 <dpm> umi, yeah, good point too. Basically it's a good opportunity to socialize and talk about these things
 145 <kelemengabor> pecisk: well, here commercial apps have good quality translations, only those suck that are localized by hobbysts :)
 146 <pecisk> kelemengabor: not in my country :)
 147 <kelemengabor> well, easier for you :)
 148 <dpm> kelemengabor, also other kind of testing, not only proofreading. It is relatively easy, but you need to be able to understand English (the test cases are in English)
 149 <dpm> we've got the localization test cases as well
 150 <dpm> let me dig out the link to the blog post I wrote a few days back...
 151 <kelemengabor> dpm: yeah, but there are only about 5 of them, is this not a problem?
 152 <kelemengabor> at least, there were...
 153 <dpm> first the link... -> http://davidplanella.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/help-localization-testing-with-the-iso-tracker/
 154 <dpm> kelemengabor, yeah, there are 5 or 6, but it's best if they could be tested in all languages
 155 <dpm> people can also propose new ones, if necessary
 156 <kelemengabor> dpm: a few cycles ago, I got some bug reports from Suse people, against Gnome, they seemed to check every single menu and dialog box and the like for translation errors
 157 <dpm> and they can even help testing in other languages, the last test case is in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, translated so everyone can help :)
 158 <kelemengabor> perhaps we could have tests this detailed
 159 <kelemengabor> about most of the Ubuntu-specific apps
 160 <kelemengabor> this would need a lot of manpower, of course...
 161 <dpm> kelemengabor, that's very interesting actually. We should talk about this in more detail on #ubuntu-translators or on the mailing list. We did have a similar discussion on UDS about using Mago for something similar, but we focused on getting the set of install test cases as a starting point. I'd love to expand the test cases and make them more useful...
 162 <kelemengabor> (I'm not saying that the bugs I got from Suse people were reported by volunteers :))
 163 <dpm> :)
 164 <dpm> anyway, I think we can leave it here for today. If anyone has got any questions later on or at any other time, feel free to ping me. I'm always here and on #ubuntu-translators, amongst other channels
 165 <dpm> Thanks a lot to everyone for listening and for the participation
 166 * dpm hugs everyone in true dholbach's style
 167 <pecisk> :)
 168 * dholbach hugs dpm truly back
 169 <umi> dpm: thank you
 170 <umi> bye
 171 <dpm> Remember we've got more training sessions in the next few days. Check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam#Training Sessions for more
 172 <dpm> we'll have another one on translations on the 11th
 173 <askhl> dpm: I'm actually at work, so pardon the slow response time. We are trying to arrange a translation jam, but I don't think it will quite coincide with UGJ
 174 <askhl> Anyway, I'll probably take a closer look at the discussion log later :)
 175 <dpm> askhl, don't worry about response time, I know everyone is busy :) Thanks for letting me know, that's awesome. While it is cool to coincide with the rest of the world for the UGJ, any time is good for a Jam! :-)