Request from the Dutch translation team

[Leo_Moons]

Hello,

We are finishing the translation of Writer Guide and Calc Guide 3.x and started translating the Getting Started Guide 4.0.
As we have limited resources and do not know where to continue, we thought that we'd better concentrate on what users are mainly looking for. As it is difficult to gauge this, we thought that the sale of the hard-copy books could assist us and therefore we would ask if somebody (Jean? - I know you have limited access to internet these days, so please do not rush) can tell us about the number of copies which have been sold so far of GSG, WG and CG.

Of course, I am posting a similar question to the Dutch users mailing list.

Many thanks
Best regards

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
At a guess i'd say that the Getting Started Guide far outstrips the rest.
It's probably the only one that really kinda needs to be done for every
branch. So maybe needs 1 every 6 months?

2nd place is probably Writer. A little way behind that is probably Calc in
3rd place. It'd be really neat to do one for one branch and the other for
the next. That way each time a new branch appears you only have to work on
1 of those guides instead of having to work on both of them. So each could
be done just 1/year?

The remainder of the guides&handbook are probably sold a lot less
frequently. Doing them in rotation also makes sense. So maybe 1 /
6months?

It would mean that each guide skips 3 branches so there would be a lot of
catch-up each time. So it might be better to do 2/ 6months?

This would mean that each branch would need either 3 or 4 of the 8 guides.
I think i'd suggest 3.

Another approach might be to get all the 1st stage done for as many as
possible for each branch but then skip all the translation-checking,
reviewing, screen-shots, proof-reading etc for all the guides except the
ones scheduled for full publication? It's still a lot of work this way but
might mean less work when it comes around to doing a full publication of a
guide or handbook.

Hopefully someone can give you reasonably good figures later. It'd be
interesting to see if my assumptions are correct at all or just plain
wrong.

Good luck and regards from
Tom

[jeanweber]

I'll be home in 2 days and will look up the figures for you then. --Jean

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
Errrr, i'd guess that getting the first version of each guide completed is
what requires the most resources. After that updating the guide
(hopefully) takes a lot less effort. Still a lot of work but just not as
huge a job as the initial translation!

Is it easier to;
1. Compare the original English versions for the old and new? That way
maybe it's possible to work out what is about new or changed functionality
or new sections, and then leave the rest as just improvements in grammar
etc?
or
2. Start again from scratch each time but perhaps use the previous
translated guide to just help?

There are only 2 things this team translates so it might be interesting to
hear ways we might set-up a good work-flow. The French Faq was largely
done by translators who were kinda outside of this team at the time and not
all native-English speakers. The Base Handbook is currently on it's 2nd
iteration but the gap between the first one and now meant that most of the
handbook had to be re-translated.

Alan (who is currently working on the Base Handbook and therefore probably
the best person for assessing what needs to be done) had some good
suggestions for improving the work-flow for the Base Handbook but if there
are translators who have more experience translating LibreOffice
publications then that might be interesting.

Regards from
Tom