Managing Localizations: What you should and shouldn't do Park - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Managing Localizations: What you should and shouldn't do Park - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Managing Localizations: What you should and shouldn't do Park Shinjo 2010. 7. 4. | T ampere, Finland | Akademy 2010 Contents 5W1H About localization Who When Where What Why How Who Musa is using KDE; he wants to


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SLIDE 1
  • 2010. 7. 4. | T

ampere, Finland | Akademy 2010

Managing Localizations:

What you should and shouldn't do

Park Shinjo

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SLIDE 2

Contents

  • 5W1H About localization
  • Who
  • When
  • Where
  • What
  • Why
  • How
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SLIDE 3

Who

  • Musa is using KDE; he wants to spread KDE to

his friends, however it’s all in English

  • Gildong is using KDE in his mother tongue;

some translations are missing

  • Anne translated KDE for several years; now she

want some other person to do her work

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SLIDE 4

Translator: be energetic

  • Familiar with KDE
  • Understand KDE terms
  • Aware differences between message and doc
  • Fluent language skill
  • Passion definitely required
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SLIDE 5

Coordinator: pick a good person

  • Passionate about translation
  • Not one-time translator
  • KDE is evolving even in today
  • Collaborate easily with others
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SLIDE 6

Beginning

  • KDE usage & background knowledge
  • Lokalize, poEdit, vim, notepad, etc.
  • kde-i18n-doc@kde.org
  • kdelibs4.po, kdebase,

desktop_kdelibs.po, desktop_l10n.po

  • SVN write access (optional)
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SLIDE 7

One person could...

  • … complete almost 40% of KDE translation
  • (early 4.x trunk)
  • … collect translations by other parties
  • Done by each distribution
  • Localized Linux distribution
  • Floating work done by others
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SLIDE 8

One person could not...

  • … complete ‘every’ part of translation
  • Documentation is hard work
  • String is changing even in today
  • … cope with emergencies
  • Cathedral vs Bazaar
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SLIDE 9

Common style

  • Locally administered style guide
  • Do not force one's idea
  • Build team internal lexicon
  • Use KDE features to think about translations
  • “Do not invent style”
  • Pick something widely accepted
  • Follow common style of the time
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SLIDE 10

Disagreement

  • Nobody can “understand” all the languages
  • KDE team has no power and knowledge of

“judging” what translation is better!

  • We should notice about it
  • Internal resolving is hard
  • T

ry to solve problem inside the team

  • Redirect to unrelated person when possible
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SLIDE 11

Quality vs. Quantity

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SLIDE 12

Quality vs. Quantity

  • Bad localization means bad reputation
  • T

ranslators should:

  • Fix partial translation as soon as possible
  • Filter out bad translations when reviewing
  • Actually test the translation whenever possible
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SLIDE 13

When

  • Notice by the list
  • Different release cycles
  • KDE SC, Extragear, Playground
  • Alpha/Beta

Message freeze Release → →

  • Deadline: some days before tagging
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SLIDE 14

Stable or trunk?

  • 6 months for new major release
  • Transition from KDE 3 to 4 was long
  • Minor release live only 2~3 months
  • Not all release uploaded to distributions
  • Lokalize’s 2-way merging
  • Stick to trunk: my policy
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SLIDE 15

Where

  • Wherever you want, with good connection
  • Your home
  • Work
  • Hack-a-thon
  • Somewhere else
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SLIDE 16

What

  • Base system
  • Program messages
  • Region-specific resources
  • Documentation
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SLIDE 17

Base system

  • Language-specific characters
  • Keyboard layouts
  • Good-looking fonts
  • Standardization
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SLIDE 18

Bloody history of CJK

  • Largest block in Unicode
  • Don’t fit in 8 bit
  • Regional encoding, replaced by UTF-8
  • Customized input method
  • Keyboard layout hard/impossible
  • Little number of good free font
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SLIDE 19

Now?

  • Not every language are used in computer
  • Complex scripts, special symbols
  • Keyboard layout and/or input method
  • Standardization from government
  • Base system itself isn’t part of KDE
  • Well-structured base system helps KDE
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SLIDE 20

Messages

  • Most localization are done here
  • Order
  • Essential should go first
  • Common strings shared by programs
  • Frequency of usage
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SLIDE 21

Region-specific resource

  • Culture
  • Number/calendar system
  • Holidays
  • Graphics
  • Statistics
  • Maps
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SLIDE 22

Aware certain area

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SLIDE 23

Documentation

  • RTFM
  • Not many teams translated yet
  • Different from messages
  • T

ends to update late

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SLIDE 24

Why

  • Attract users whose mother tongue isn't English
  • Free software easily floats into the Internet
  • Assumptions for each language is bad
  • Use your mother tongue in your desktop
  • Think about yours
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SLIDE 25

How

  • Create a team
  • Join to the team
  • T

ranslate the message

  • Commit
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SLIDE 26

Found a team

  • T

ranslate at least 4 base files

  • Leave a message at the list
  • Sometimes things go not well
  • Different person translate same thing
  • T

ry to contact each other

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SLIDE 27

Join to the team

  • Leave message to coordinator/mailing list
  • For small team direct connection is preferred
  • Mailing list is not always good
  • Amount of communication
  • Management of mailing list itself
  • Not suited for growing teams
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SLIDE 28

Translate the message

  • Prepare favorite PO editor
  • Checkout branch for your language
  • Read all your team's requirements
  • T

ranslate the message

  • T

est & Commit

  • Send po to your team coordinator
  • Directly commit into SVN
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SLIDE 29

Launchpad

  • Web-based translation system itself is great
  • Policy is not so good
  • Licensing
  • Quality management
  • Back to upstream
  • KDE strongly discourage this
  • Kubuntu specific string
  • Manual copy to upstream
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SLIDE 30

Suggestion: KDE l10n renovation

  • T

eam info: is it really useful?

  • Could be viewed as 'active'
  • Can communicate with local language
  • Easily outdated, external local team page
  • Userbase, T

echbase: catchy icons. Why not us?

  • Divide section for each group of users
  • Static rather than dynamic
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SLIDE 31

Suggestion: KDE l10n renovation

  • T

ranslation HOWTO/Localization guide

  • Mixed targets
  • Maintaining two?
  • Accessibility to information
  • Enough links to other page?
  • User survey could help
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SLIDE 32

Thanks

  • KDE e.V. for numerous support
  • Albert Astals Cid for yielding me the opportunity
  • Also managing entire KDE localization
  • Those who translated KDE into Korean
  • Also including other languages
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SLIDE 33

Image courtesies

  • http://www.motivatedphotos.com/?id=984
  • Screen capture of Marble