[libreoffice-website] Re: Update on Drupal Website Progress

Hi Sophie

I have answered Jean-Baptiste on the French mailist but will try to give 
you the gist of my answer here as well for others to read. Michael will 
chime in as well, I am sure.

We all have to remember that some of these tools are being built into 
the Drupal site in order to make it all easier for us to work as well as 
to have access to other areas that we are not accustomed to. For 
example, some of our membership may have never had a chance to visit 
different localised sites due to the language barrier, forums, wiki 
pages etc. By building in automatic translation tools, we can then use 
the word "enable" in our description of our LibreOffice site. We can 
then assure members/visitors that the translation tools will enable them 
to visit any corner of the site without the accompanying language 
barrier. Certainly, I would propose that most if not all people would 
agree that the translations may, at times, not be 100% accurate, but it 
will still give the members/visitors the sense/meaning of the pages 
visited as well as enlighten them to the other contributing localised 
members of the LibreOffice project.

A good example where such a tool would come in handy is exactly this 
thread. How many more people would contribute to this particular thread 
is the automatic translation tools allowed them the opportunity to 
view/read these threads. OR for that matter how many more people would 
participate on the Drupal Website Development Team if the translation 
tools would help.

Of course, this will all be put to test when the tools and Drupal 
test-site are installed. At that time, we can all share our experiences 
of the translation tools and decide whether or not they could be used 
before the site goes live.

BTW, a good suggestion that Jean-Sebastien had was to offer a button 
whereby the member/visitor could either turn on/off the translation 
tools as well as an offer to translate the page for the site.

Le 2010-11-22 12:58, Sophie Gautier a écrit :
> Hi Michael, all,
> On 22/11/2010 04:32, Michael Wheatland wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 2:31 AM, Sophie Gautier
> > <gautier.sophie@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > You do not mean that the sites in different languages will look the same
> > > with the same content? Language projects need to have their own
> > > content and
> > > do not rely on automatic translation because it deliver very poor
> > > quality.
> > > For the Drupal sites used on the OOo project, we manage the
> > > translation of
> > > the Drupal files on Pootle, so I think we can do the same here. But
> > > for the
> > > content, really each project should be able to manage it's own content.
> > >
> > > And thanks all for your work :)
> > >
> > > Kind regards
> > > Sophie
> >
> > Automatic Translation will only occur on things which are considered
> > 'instant communication' such as forums, mailing lists, and such.
>
> Well, how will it works. We are used to have forums and mailing lists in
> our own languages, with hundreds of mails/questions per day. So how will
> it works between all the languages? For example between DE/FR/NL?
> We are building a FAQ from these exchanges or a knowledge base, how will
> it work?
> > The main section of the site (ie product information, support pages
> > etc.) will be manually translated either through pootle or directly on
> > the site.
> > If there is a page which does not have a native translation yet it
> > will display in english and allow the user to offer a translation
> > directly on the site if authorised as a translator.
>
> But what for a page which is in French and has no equivalent in English
> or is not relevant in Russian or in Sinhalese ? We do have contents
> relative to a dedicated language that do not concern others? And, for my
> own opinion, a fallback in English is just not acceptable.

Good question, where would the page be placed in that particular 
language if there was not equivalent page in the other language? In this 
case I would say that the page would only be translated by the 
translation tools as there would be no area for the page to reside. 
Unless it proved interesting and important to reside on a particular 
localised site, then, it could be formally translated by a human hand.

As far as falling back to English, IMO, seeing as this is the agreed 
international language for the site, it just makes sense to have it 
fallback to international English. We should all keep in mind that there 
will also be a localised English site just like all other supported 
languages and that the localised English site may also have pages that 
do not apply to any other languages. It should still be available 
publicly if a translation of that page is offered. We profess to be 
transparent, then there should be no problem with other groups reading 
our pages in translated form.

> > To summarise we will be maintaining the integrity and quality of all
> > of the 'important' content while allowing cross-language communication
> > in real time for community discussions. I envisage that this should
> > break down a lot of barriers for people getting involved in the
> > project.
>
> We break the barriers by providing support and content in the language
> of the user and the contributors. Several native language teams have
> already strong communities of users and contributors, this works really
> well for the OOo NLC and we should not break this imho. For the French
> team for example, they are already working on documentation, QA and
> marketing. There is a forum running for thousands of users and mailing
> list are quite busy too. I don't see how all this activity will run if
> you translate the content from English as a central language to the
> other languages, that will be seen has a very very negative approach. Or
> may be I missed something?

I think so. The translation tools are not based on English being the 
predominant language. In fact, the Drupal team does not think this way 
and I would personally give the Drupal Dev Team a "gentle" reminder and 
nudge, that we are all a community of equals. For all we know, the best 
documentation could be found on the German or Spanish or French or 
Italian or ... sites. This attempt to use the translation tools is to 
enable access for everyone to all parts of the site. This will give all 
language groups a better view of each others organisations and will make 
for a better solid community. The Drupal team sees the translation tools 
more of a bonding tool rather than a fractious tool. The respect for the 
different participating languages are heralded.

> I've added Jean-Baptiste Faure in CC of this mail, because I'm still
> travelling and he will be able to answer the questions you may have
> during the two next days where I'll be disconnected.
>
> But again this is really important that the contents for the Native
> Language sites are provided in the native language of this group by this
> group and reflect the needs of this group, not the one of another
> language, be it English, German or Japanese. I hope you understand
> my/our concerns because the approach is really different, may be at the
> opposite, of your proposal. This approach has permitted to build a
> strong and efficient community in OpenOffice.org and shall be continued
> the same way here.

In my mind, the same approach is still there. The only difference is 
that people will be able to navigate, for example, the French site and 
able to enjoy the work that you have created. So, if a Chinese visitor 
to the site wanted to see what the other sites had accomplished, that 
visitor could browse to the French site and read in her/his native 
language the pages on the French site.

At question here is more the accuracy of the translation tools and 
whether we are comfortable with its accuracy rate. This will only be 
evident once we start filling in the Drupal "test" localised sites with 
information and we (members) evaluate its success rate. Would we be 
content with a 60%-70%-80% etc. accuracy rate? I guess we will have to 
see. Personally, I am also curious as to how accurate the tools will be 
and whether or not they will be acceptable. We may decide to allow their 
use but with a clear caveat of its accuracy rate.

> There is no emergency currently, we can still take time to speak about
> it if you need to. I'll be back on Wednesday, don't hesitate to ask any
> further questions or explanations you may need.
>
> Kind regards
> Sophie

The translation tools question is up for debate and discussion by all 
members. I am of the opinion of let's install the tools and see. We can 
always remove them if they are not acceptable to the community. This all 
before the site goes live. We should at least try to make all sites 
accessible to all people.

Cheers

Marc



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