[sldev] Handling open source translations

[Alissa Sabre]

Soft,

> I'm curious - how do other projects handle volunteer-submitted
> translations?

By enough eyeballs.

# See the lesson #8 (and #6 also) in The Cathedral and the Bazaar :-)

> * They could be loaded down with obscenities or rudeness.

Yes, they could be, as the current Linden's official Japanese translation
partly *are*.

> If none of
> us speak, say, Latvian, we'd never know the harm of telling someone to
> "go pick mushrooms"

Your first mistake is excluding users, or residents in SL terms, from "us".

IF there are no Latvian speaking residents in SL, nobody cares about
Latvian translation, so the quality doesn't matter.  I believe,
however, there are *some* Latvian speakers already, who are
experienced in SL.  If we released just broken Latvian translation,
and it said go pick mushrooms, they immediately notice the message was
translated in a wrong way, and would complain loudly.  (Unless we
closed our ears.)

BTW, the current Japanese translation is not that bad.  It sometimes
says complete nonsense and makes users puzzled, but, as far as I know,
it says no critical silliness.

> if we use machine
> translation to verify translations back to English.

Who in the world said so?  I recommend not to do it, anyway.

> * They could contain misleading translations.

Yes, as the current Linden's official ... (ditto)

> A fraudster could have a
> field day by reversing LSL debit permission payment accept/reject
> buttons and singling out users in that language community. How do we
> protect users?

By trusting the community.

> We can't simply say the translation is "unsupported."

Correct.  Saying that and ignoring the complaints on the translation
makes things worse.

We need to distribute the draft translation for testing (call it beta,
RC, FL, whatever), gather feedback from the language users, and repair
mistakes fast.  During the test cycle, we need to warn users on the
possibilities of hazardous mistakes, of course.  The point is, making
ourselves responsible for the translation.

# In that particular reason, I believe it is very bad way to call all
# language UI's other than English "Beta" for more than a year...

LL could even _hire_ several residents who are (1) very good at
Latvian, (2) able to communicate in English, and (3) experienced in SL
and ask them to review the traslation, and compensating them with some
real money, Linden dollars, or other in-world treats such as free
lands.

> * Open source developers don't deliver on a schedule.

As Lindens don't.

Well, I'm not joking.  LL has been saying on this SLDev list that LL
has no set schedule on viewer releases; they are ready when ready.  LL
employees always say that's the reason LL never expose future release
schedules to open source developers; it is not secrecy.

Unless LL has been telling a lie to the community, both LL developers
and open source developers don't deliver on a schedule.  No differences.

> But when we get to languages with only a few hundred users, it's tough
> to make a case for commercial translation services to do the updates.

I understand it.

> We can't hold back shipping while we wait for every last language to
> be brought to parity by volunteers.

You don't need to.  Currently, most of the translations shipped with
SL viewer are out-of-sync, due to the recent big changes on the UI
design, as well as introduction of WindLight.  They are basically not
"open source contribution."  I've heard you LL has a contract with an
external translation service company, and let them translate XUI files.

> How do we make contributions
> timely, or how do we eliminate the need for timely translations?

It is no guaranteed way to make contributions timely.  There are no
good way to avoid relase-by-release translation.  Anyway, Linden's
translation process doesn't work well.  The translation is not
delivered in a timely manner.  Why do you worry only about the
community's contribution?

My suggestion is as follows:

(1) Publish LL's changes to base (en-us) XUI files early.  The best
    way will be to publish LL's internal SVN repository, but you
    should have working on that kinds of things (or some altrnatives
    to that), so I don't think I need to explain why it is needed.
    The only thing I can say now is that it's not just C++ source;
    translation is not an exception.

(2) Encourage translators by taking their works as soon as possible,
    gathering constructive feedback on them, and giving sincere
    appreciation to them through community development channels.  (As
    oppposed to the current practice, i.e., just ignoring the
    submission for months or saying "we don't want your translation."

    Have Lindens learned from the lessons of VWR-1293?  It was a sad
    story...

(3) Develop a _drop-in_ mechanism, or something similar to that, to
    add a new language into the viewer, so that community developped
    translation can be distributed without bothering Lindens.
    Languages with hundreds of users will soon be supported by the
    community if a good mechanims and environment is available.

    I imagine tens of languages are supported by residents groups, and
    the updated languages resources are developped during the viewer's
    RC cycle and released just several days after the viewer's
    official version up.

(4) For some active language groups, you Lindens could set a deadline
    for translation.  For example, you set a deadline three days
    before the planned release date of the new version of SL viewer.
    The community tries to stabilize the updated translation, using
    the RC viewers, by the set date.  LL can take the translation that
    made it on time and put them into the official release package.

    This *may* solve the issue you raised earlier: open source devs
    don't deliver on a schedule.  There are no guarantee that open
    source developers deliver on a schedule, but many are happy to try
    it.  Documentation of some Linux distributions are run that way;
    the core release team sets a date, and the translation groups
    tries to deliver by the date.  In most cases, translated documents
    are available on time...

Anyway I'm grad you Lindens started thinking on this issue.  I've been
thinking it for more than a year, really...

    Alissa Sabre
--------------------------------------
GANBARE! NIPPON! Win your ticket to Olympic Games 2008.
http://pr.mail.yahoo.co.jp/ganbare-nippon/