Translating the Guides

Hi :)  
Can anyone suggest a good work-flow for translating the guides?

Someone had a look at the ODFAuthors site and said it looked too complicated for their small team and that just using a wiki might b better.  Here is the Brazilians over-complicated attempt at using their wiki

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/pt-br/Tradução
Grrrr, i'm in an old Fedora and lacking a few fonts on this install.  That last word should say Traducao but i think it's clickable as is.  Maybe it looks right on your machine?  I don't know how those font codes work.

Anyway i suspect their wiki looks over-complicated partly through my fault as i tried to help with colour-coding and stuff a year or 2 ago.  I had not been following their discussions about it so i just had to guess and i think it went wrong in places.  Also i didn't know how to tell them it was just a suggestion (based on what i had understood from them) and that i kinda assumed they would re-work it until it did what they wanted.  My Portugese (Br) just wasn't up to the challenge!

Can someone here give Kolbjørn an ODFAuthors login so they can have a look around?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom, Kolbjørn,

Hi :slight_smile:
Can anyone suggest a good work-flow for translating the guides?

The German-nl has some different ways for translating:
1. ODFAuthors: One translate the whole text, the next do a review and so on.
2. Making a wiki page with the original English text and then make the
translation step by step. You only have little pieces to translate, the
next can review it, no thoughts first about screenshots etc. When all is
translated and reviewed twice, we take the translated text in an odt and
put the screenshots etc., review and publish it.
This way we translate the whole Getting started book. It is a long way
and it stagnates now but the whole German translation stagnates because
the people have to do many other things.
You need three persons for translating but you can ask some newbies
maybe for reviewing and you have control about the way it is going.

A description in German
[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DE/Doku/Handbucherstellung

Example:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DE/Doku/Calc/02_EingabeAenderungFormatierung

If you are interested I can tell you some more (if you don't understand
the German description)

Someone had a look at the ODFAuthors site and said it looked too

complicated for their small team and that just using a wiki might b
better. Here is the Brazilians over-complicated attempt at using their
wiki

Hello,

The french team uses a different way to produce documentation. We don't use
ODFAuthors and we work only with the wiki.

1. We have a wiki page about the documentation contributions
<https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/FR/Doc> where everybody declares what
he wants to do.
2. At first, an author declares he will work on a chapter.
3. When he has done, he uploads the document in the wiki and calls for
reviewers in the contributions page.
4. A reviewer declares he will work on a document.
5. The reviewer updates the document in Modifications mode, using comments.
Once he has done, he uploads the updated document in the wiki and declares
he has reviewed the chapter.
6. The author applies (or not) the reviewer modifications and uploads the
updated document.
7. Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 for each reviewer.
8. After a while, when no reviewer work on a chapter, the author publishes
the document in odt and pdf formats in the wiki page about publications
<https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications/fr#Guides_utilisateur_officiels>
.

We have done some work with this method, but you also need a good
communication thanks to the mailing lists.

Best regards,

Den 24.02.2013 23:19, skreiv klaus-jürgen weghorn ol:

Hi Tom, Kolbjørn,

Hi :slight_smile:
Can anyone suggest a good work-flow for translating the guides?

The German-nl has some different ways for translating:
1. ODFAuthors: One translate the whole text, the next do a review and so on.
2. Making a wiki page with the original English text and then make the
translation step by step. You only have little pieces to translate, the
next can review it, no thoughts first about screenshots etc. When all is
translated and reviewed twice, we take the translated text in an odt and
put the screenshots etc., review and publish it.
This way we translate the whole Getting started book. It is a long way
and it stagnates now but the whole German translation stagnates because
the people have to do many other things.
You need three persons for translating but you can ask some newbies
maybe for reviewing and you have control about the way it is going.

A description in German
[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DE/Doku/Handbucherstellung

Example:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DE/Doku/Calc/02_EingabeAenderungFormatierung

If you are interested I can tell you some more (if you don't understand
the German description)

Thank you for this descriptions.
I understand enough German to read the links. (Deutch für Turisten Niveau). I will give them a look later.
My problem is that the Norwegian team is a bit inactive at the moment. Only a few people are active on our mailing lists.
But I am not giving it up the next weeks or so. Just have to find the best way of doing this job.
Kolbjoern

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks :)  That sounds like a good plan.

It's interesting to see guide with the most complete versions is the Calc Guide! 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications/fr#Guides_utilisateur_officiels

I was wondering.  The English(US)/International wiki has different grouped-columns for different releases but translator teams don't seem to need that so much.

Perhaps different columns for different stages of the process?  So the first column would be the raw product, the untranslated chapter.  The next would be for Authors, then one more column for Reviewer, then for re-Author, then 2nd Reviewer, then Proof-reader, then Final?  Is proof-reading better after reviewing or before or in the middle?  Do you really need more than 1 reviewer?  "Release early and release often"?

Perhaps we could make use of the fact that file-links are shown in red until the file gets uploaded?  Perhaps use different back-ground colours so that green back-ground means it's ready for the next column?  Either way might be over-complicating it again.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Based on what people have said so far i might be able to put a wiki together later today.  If i can do it for "no" language-code (= nynorsk?) then we might be able to see how workable 'my' wiki is for smooth work-flow or see if i have over-complicated it.

@ Kolbjørn
I wouldn't worry about reading those links btw, i think they were aimed at me but i think they are too much information for what i am aiming for right now.  My first attempt doesn't need to be perfect.

Tbh i think the number 1 most useful thing you could do would be to just do the initial translation of one of the 3 crucial chapters of the "Getting Started Guide" into Norwegian nynorsk.  Don't worry too much about screen-shots or diagrams this time unless it's trivially easy for you to fix.  The 3 most crucial chapters seem to be 2, 3 and 4 so just pick any of those. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Den 25.02.2013 13:38, skreiv Tom Davies:

Hi :slight_smile:
Based on what people have said so far i might be able to put a wiki together later today. If i can do it for "no" language-code (= nynorsk?) then we might be able to see how workable 'my' wiki is for smooth work-flow or see if i have over-complicated it.

Sorry. I forgot to be more precise.
In the wiki you may keep the "no" tag if it is more convenient. We could then differ between "nb" and "nn" inside the tag/side.
Kolbjørn

Den 25.02.2013 13:38, skreiv Tom Davies:

Hi :slight_smile:
Based on what people have said so far i might be able to put a wiki together later today. If i can do it for "no" language-code (= nynorsk?) then we might be able to see how workable 'my' wiki is for smooth work-flow or see if i have over-complicated it.

"no" code is Norway's *country* code. Former used as a general language for Norwegian. Norwegian nynorsk has the language code "nn" and Norwegian bokmål the lan code "nb". (Yes, few people in Norway, but two written languages. They differ perhaps a little more than English GB and US, or a little less than Swedish - Danish. All norwegians understand both of them).

@ Kolbjørn
I wouldn't worry about reading those links btw, i think they were aimed at me but i think they are too much information for what i am aiming for right now. My first attempt doesn't need to be perfect.

I agree. I do not need all this information at first.

Tbh i think the number 1 most useful thing you could do would be to just do the initial translation of one of the 3 crucial chapters of the "Getting Started Guide" into Norwegian nynorsk. Don't worry too much about screen-shots or diagrams this time unless it's trivially easy for you to fix. The 3 most crucial chapters seem to be 2, 3 and 4 so just pick any of those.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

A couple of days ago I downloaded the "Getting started with Calc" (4.0) from https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications to give it a try. This what you meant?
I have no problem adding "Norwegian" images. Using indexed format i .png.
Found out I have to study Writer a bit more :-). So at the moment I am in the starting phase (or how you say it in English).
I do like to cooperate with you if I could be to any help. But I am not an experienced user of LibreOffice. Perhaps the average translator you are looking for?
Kolbjørn

Hi :slight_smile:
Calc is the 2nd most used application/module in LibreOffice.  The 1st most used one is Writer.  So i was suggesting translating
  2
Setting Up LibreOffice
  3
Using Styles and Templates
  4
Getting Started with Writer
but doing
  5
Getting Started with Calc
is great instead of doing the Writer one.  Chances are that someone else will find the Writer one easier later so leaving it to later makes sense just in case someone else does appear.  You could always come back to it later if you are still around then and by then you might find it easier too by already having gone through the chapters that most people find tougher.

It was only when i started using Styles that i saw a big difference between MS Office and LibreOffice.  In LibreOffice Styles are much more important.  Styles make it faster and easier to produce much better quality documents.  In MS Office they are just a pain.

Setting up LibreOffice is likely to be the first thing people might want help with!

So, that is why i was suggesting chapters 2, 3 and 4 but of course each person's own way works well for them and gives a good result for the whole project too.  A bit like some of the ideas behind torrenting rather than straight downloading.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hello Tom,

Tom wrote

The English(US)/International wiki has different grouped-columns for
different releases but translator teams don't seem to need that so much.

I think it's important to know on which release you work.

Tom wrote

Perhaps different columns for different stages of the process?  So the
first column would be the raw product, the untranslated chapter.  The next
would be for Authors, then one more column for Reviewer, then for
re-Author, then 2nd Reviewer, then Proof-reader, then Final?  Is
proof-reading better after reviewing or before or in the middle?  Do you
really need more than 1 reviewer?  "Release early and release often"?

Sounds interesting. This kind of table can be useful for structuring a
documentation project, but can be seen as over-complicated. For me, each
documentation team has to set its more or less formal approach.

Best regards,

Hi :slight_smile:
People usually find Writer easy to use and understand so just leave it for someone else to do.  You could come back to it later if someone hasn't done it by then.

You seem to prefer the most complicated things that other people usually avoid so keep going with what you prefer!

Wrt "the help files" and the tools;
If people here start trying to up-date the in-built help in a month or two then you might be able to help us work out how to do it. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Your list looks nice to me.
I started translating Calc because this is the part I felt comfortable with. Using Calc to get a better understanding of the LO as a whole.
When I feel I master Writer i bit better I'll perhaps translate it too.
And: translating the help files is a good way of learning the tools.
Kolbjoern

Den 25.02.2013 20:59, skreiv Tom Davies: