Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Translators

[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #9128: [PATCH

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knight at teksavvy

Oct 22, 2010, 10:23 AM

Post #1 of 3 (270 views)
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[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #9128: [PATCH

Hi!

I'm redirecting this to the translator's ML, if you reply to this message
please remove the dev ML from the list of recipient. If at all possible
when tickets deal with translation related matters please try to redirect
the discussion to the Mythtv-translators mailing list.

> On 22-10-2010 16:18, Jos Hoekstra wrote:
> > Because I've only translated on a ad-hoc basis I don't really know how
> > to facilitate the translation itself.
> > Foppe is in the same boat so to say and it would be better to make >
> translation easier so it's more attractive for people to translate.
> I think MythTV could benefit from some sort of structural website that
> allows translators to easily update strings.
>
> In another project I work in Pootle is used [1], [2]. Perhaps that might
> be a nice feature to have for MythTV as well.

On a per translation basis I would have no problem with it as long as it
produces files which are compatible with what Qt produces in *every* way.

Personnally I would be against forcing everybody to use this though... Some
people have already established review processes and correcting a string
and reverifying it in context can take less than a minute with Qt Linguist
which is not the case with these sites.

I tried two similar sites recently...

The first one could deal with Qt files directly.

As far as the interface was concerned you more or less loss the notion of
context (though not totally) which helps when you do the translation.
Everything more or less ended up on the same page.

It could use Google translate (and other sites too I believe) and it gave
relatively good results but they were not as good as what a real person
could do (or is sometimes force to do because of space constraints).

Its cons:

- It took close to 15 minutes to load a MythFrontend's translation.
- The files I got back from this site (so that I could apply them back to
my checkout of MythTV) were *corrupted*...

The second site I played with could not deal with Qt files directly, you
had to convert them to .po.

Here too you lost, at least partially, the notion of context.

The main problem here was that it could not deal with Qt files directly
(only po) and there is a low interest on the part of its maitainers to make
it work with Qt files.

I converted a file to .po to try it and overall the .po format seems to
keep most of the info the Qt file had.

I haven't tried it with languages which have particularities such as no
singular/plural forms or more than singular/plural forms (some languages
make a differences between 2 and more than 2 (plural)) to see if it can
deal with these (Qt/Qt Linguist can...)

I haven't tried Pootle yet... It does look like it support Qt files
natively which makes it interesting...

>
> This would give users a simple, uniform interface which is easy to work
> with.

Qt Linguist is pretty easy to use and does offer a simply, uniform
interface which is easy to work wih.

> It is easy to see what strings need to be translated

Qt Linguist does that but only on a per translation file basis.

> for which language and what part of the project.

Nick Morrott's translation status page does this job nicely I think.

> Patches can then be autogenerated and added to the source at
> predetermined points in time, for instance, before release(-candidates)
> and the like.

That would make our (Kenni and I) job easier but not the translator's since
yuo would not be able to see your translation in context until we extract
the translations and commit them.

There would always be the possibility of doing it yourself but then you are
back with the same issues you have when you translation with Qt Linguist
(or even a text editor), applying patches and other similar things...

I think Qt Linguist does a pretty good job (it makes it easy to search for
strings, it proposes translations, it easily shows unfinished translations,
etc...) but there is a lot of things that must be done manually outside of
it which does make the translation process harder than it could be.

I am not sure however that everybody uses Qt Linguist, it looks like some
people are editing the .ts files manually which soon becomes very difficult
to do.

Have a nice day!

Nick

knight at teksavvy

Oct 23, 2010, 4:15 PM

Post #2 of 3 (256 views)
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[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #9128: [PATCH [In reply to]

Hi!

On 10/22/2010 1:23 PM, Nicolas Riendeau wrote:
> I haven't tried Pootle yet... It does look like it support Qt files
> natively which makes it interesting...

I had a chance to play with it and its overall a nice program...

It does currently have one major blocker as far as usage with MythTV is
concerned, it is currently unable to deal with plurals in Qt ts files.

re: http://bugs.locamotion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1727

(This ticket was opened by what I believe to be one of the developers
when I asked for help on their IRC channel. He was one of the two ops
present at the time, the other was the developer this ticket was
initially assigned to.)

There are other things that must be looked into but this is the major
issue I can see with this application right now.

>>
>> This would give users a simple, uniform interface which is easy to work
>> with.
>
> Qt Linguist is pretty easy to use and does offer a simply, uniform
> interface which is easy to work wih.

The point there was more than Qt Linguist is easy to work with and gets
the job done.

It is however a lot more difficult to distribute work with it as
everybody has its own little copy of the translation on his pc.

That doesn't mean its impossible to do though (for the French
translation we had to exchange a lot of emails (using a mailing list)
and we have our own SVN repository which send us a diff file after each
commit). Since we are now mostly in maintenance more we mostly rely on
the diff files to see what the other has committed and possibly comment.
Most of the sentences we have to translate now resemble sentences we
already have translated and Qt Linguist notices this and proposes us
possible translations.

I can easily understand however that some people would prefer using a
web application with a single copy of the translation that many users
can update at the same time. For translations which still have a lot of
strings left to translate I can see this as a definite advantage.

This is why we, Kenni and I, have started looking at these web applications.

We have to make sure the applications we are looking at produces files
which are 100% compatible with Qt, that they don't cause translations
issues or even worse, application issues...

Anything that supports Qt ts files natively has a big advantage over the
rest as far as I am concerned.

I am sure both Kenni and I will take a closer look at Pootle once the
plural problem will have been fixed.

Have a nice day!

Nick

jonathan at snetram

Oct 25, 2010, 8:04 AM

Post #3 of 3 (254 views)
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[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #9128: [PATCH [In reply to]

On 24-10-2010 1:15, Nicolas Riendeau wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On 10/22/2010 1:23 PM, Nicolas Riendeau wrote:
>> I haven't tried Pootle yet... It does look like it support Qt files
>> natively which makes it interesting...
>
> I had a chance to play with it and its overall a nice program...
>
> It does currently have one major blocker as far as usage with MythTV is
> concerned, it is currently unable to deal with plurals in Qt ts files.
>
> re: http://bugs.locamotion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1727

I know, I am subscribed to it as well. I found that the same day while
testing on my local installation. It seems they are thinking of a
temporary solution, until their release schedule allows for a
fundamental change and a more permanent fix.

> There are other things that must be looked into but this is the major
> issue I can see with this application right now.

Is there a public list of things that we would like for a translation
interface? Or is it just you and Kenny deciding?

> The point there was more than Qt Linguist is easy to work with and gets
> the job done.
>
> It is however a lot more difficult to distribute work with it as
> everybody has its own little copy of the translation on his pc.

True.

> That doesn't mean its impossible to do though (for the French
> translation we had to exchange a lot of emails (using a mailing list)
> and we have our own SVN repository which send us a diff file after each
> commit). Since we are now mostly in maintenance more we mostly rely on
> the diff files to see what the other has committed and possibly comment.

Yes, but this is overhead that unfortunately needs to be set up for
every translation team, by the members them self mostly.

> Most of the sentences we have to translate now resemble sentences we
> already have translated and Qt Linguist notices this and proposes us
> possible translations.

Pootle does suggest as well, but on a per word base IIRC.

> I can easily understand however that some people would prefer using a
> web application with a single copy of the translation that many users
> can update at the same time. For translations which still have a lot of
> strings left to translate I can see this as a definite advantage.

I think collaboration is easier indeed as everybody is seeing the actual
items to translate instead of possibly duplicating work other
translators still have in their local tree.

> We have to make sure the applications we are looking at produces files
> which are 100% compatible with Qt, that they don't cause translations
> issues or even worse, application issues...

My testing so far has lead to a working file, although the first diff is
quite large for all ts files. Most differences are comsetical ones,
however there is the issue of the pauscal/plural issue.
The other major difference is that Qt Linguist (or translators) seem to
escape special charachters. So far my testing with the Pootle generated
ts file (that does not escape special characters) seems to work fine. Do
you know what is the reason that the escape sequences are present in the
current .ts files?

> Anything that supports Qt ts files natively has a big advantage over the
> rest as far as I am concerned.

Pootle does that, apart from the pauscal/plural bug.

> I am sure both Kenni and I will take a closer look at Pootle once the
> plural problem will have been fixed.

Please do so, judging from the bug the developers hope to have a hack in
place soonish as they are mantioning release 2.1.

Kind regards,

Jonathan

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