Re: [libreoffice-l10n] Recruiting translators/editors (was: Re: Transfering HELP from AOO to LO)

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 5:35 AM, Nino Novak <nn.libo@kflog.org> wrote:
> On 25.08.2014 19:09, Robinson Tryon wrote:
>
> > What can we do to recruit more people to help with translations?
>
> For me (an occasional translator) the biggest hurdle is the technical
> overhead needed for some of the translations. Somebody like me, who just
> wants to translate a page or correct some errors - being forced to learn
> pootle (or similar tools) prevents me from "just starting".

I haven't really used pootle much, but it does seem a bit quirky.

There are a number of things we could do to improve translations. To
hop over to another piece of infra for a moment, getting the
Translations extension installed on the TDF wiki will hopefully be a
good step forward:
https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/107

> Therefore in my eyes, a simpler workflow could substantially improve
> crowd-sourcing of help file translations / corrections. Example:
>  - present an "edit" or "translate" button on every page or even paragraph
> (could / should? be restricted to registered users)

Restricting edits to logged-in users is a good approach to
spam/griefers, even if the content is reviewed before inclusion.

>  - transmit the diff of such a user-made change to a group of reviewers with
> "publish" rights
>  - make it easy to integrate the changes back into the original page (e.g.
> by buttons "accept" / "edit" / "dismiss" (if spam etc)
>  - make history visible (e.g. like in Wikis) so that everybody can see, who
> has contributed what

These all seem like they could be helpful improvements to Pootle. Some
of them (e.g. making history visible) seem like they might not take a
ton of development work. Does the Language team chat with the Pootle
developers at all? Are they receptive to suggestions/enhancement
requests?

> ... well, that's just a proposal that came into my mind while reading your
> question. Easy to request but heavy to implement, I suppose ;-)

Some things might take more work, such as adding in a completely new
review system, but others might be more straightforward.

Once the Translations extension is installed in MediaWiki, it would be
great if you could give some feedback about the way that it works. I
believe that it integrates a number of features you mentioned
including history and a mechanism for review. I'm not suggesting that
MediaWiki could replace Pootle, but perhaps one tool might help to
inform and improve another.

Best,
--R


-- 
Robinson Tryon
QA Engineer - The Document Foundation
Volunteer Coordinator - LibreOffice Community Outreach
qubit@libreoffice.org

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