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Food For Thought: Bugzilla Localization?
Ok, I'm just going to sort of throw this into the mix, so here goes:

I was talking with the -doc people about the bugzilla doc I was working on. I wanted to try and get rid of the pictures, and go with something more ascii representative for ease of translation. But then someone brought up the obvious point that our bugzilla is a non-english speaking language bugzilla. This brings in mind the issue of how to handle bugs that non-english users want solved. A couple of ideas came to mind:

1) Are there official gentoo i18n groups, and if so, do they have their own bugzilla. If so, maybe we can link to them from the non-bugzilla site, and the people their can transition non-english bugs over to standard bugzilla.

2) Can people be brought on board to localize bugzilla, as well as provide translation of non-english bugs.

3) Somewhat similiar to 2, explain to users what the english fields mean, and have them fill it out in their own language, then have someone come by and translate it for the developers.

While I don't have quite all the answers here, I'm wondering if someone has a viable solution to this somewhat obscure issue. Thanks.

Chris White
Re: Food For Thought: Bugzilla Localization? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, Aug 03, 2005 at 04:17:38PM +0900, Chris White wrote:
> 1) Are there official gentoo i18n groups, and if so, do they have their own bugzilla. If so, maybe we can link to them from the non-bugzilla site, and the people their can transition non-english bugs over to standard bugzilla.

Nope (to your first question). We don't have a real i18n crew yet. It might
be a good idea for form one; we do have good support for i18n generally
(package maintainers are using the LINGUAS and the documentation has
references to locales and such) but an expertise group can probably improve
the distribution (for instance by adding the necessary man-pages-${LANG}
ebuilds, etc.).

> 2) Can people be brought on board to localize bugzilla, as well as provide translation of non-english bugs.

I'm not in favor of having a non-English official bugzilla. Tooooo much
resources to put in it; I'd rather use translation teams to continuously
keep translating interesting stuff, like documentation but also help with
the localisation of Portage if that ever comes this far.

Translating bugs is such a waist of resources...

Wkr,
Sven Vermeulen

--
Documentation project leader - Gentoo Foundation Trustee

The Gentoo Project <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>
Re: Food For Thought: Bugzilla Localization? [ In reply to ]
Hi,

Chris White wrote:
> 2) Can people be brought on board to localize bugzilla, as well as provide translation of non-english bugs.
>
> 3) Somewhat similiar to 2, explain to users what the english fields mean, and have them fill it out in their own language, then have someone come by and translate it for the developers.

While it'd be surely a nice idea to translate the field description, I
don't think it's a good idea to have non-english bug reports. I'm native
German speaker, and whenever I see German compilation errors I'm like
"WTF??". I really can't figure out what it's all about. With english
error messages, it's just clear.
I don't know what it's like in other languages, but at least for German,
it's PITA to translate technical terms, as many of the words simply
don't exist. Most people just mix up German and English, and it works
quite well. Also, I think most people speak at least broken English, or
they just use google translations/babelfish & co. Translating bugs is
just a waste of time to me. And having a localized bugzilla with a fat
note "Please write your bug report in English!" is just ridiculous.

Regards,

--
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: Food For Thought: Bugzilla Localization? [ In reply to ]
Chris White wrote:
> Ok, I'm just going to sort of throw this into the mix, so here goes:
>
> I was talking with the -doc people about the bugzilla doc I was working on. I wanted to try and get rid of the pictures, and go with something more ascii representative for ease of translation. But then someone brought up the obvious point that our bugzilla is a non-english speaking language bugzilla. This brings in mind the issue of how to handle bugs that non-english users want solved. A couple of ideas came to mind:

Good news. It will make the guide easier to read, to translate and to download
(it weighs as much as 3 full handbooks at the moment).

> 1) Are there official gentoo i18n groups, and if so, do they have their own bugzilla. If so, maybe we can link to them from the non-bugzilla site, and the people their can transition non-english bugs over to standard bugzilla.
>
> 2) Can people be brought on board to localize bugzilla, as well as provide translation of non-english bugs.
>
> 3) Somewhat similiar to 2, explain to users what the english fields mean, and have them fill it out in their own language, then have someone come by and translate it for the developers.
>
> While I don't have quite all the answers here, I'm wondering if someone has a viable solution to this somewhat obscure issue. Thanks.
>
> Chris White

A translated bugzie howto would be most useful but I doubt a localised
bugs.g.o would help. IMHO, it will generate more bugs entirely not in English.
Looks like we'd need to pass bugs through several filters:
bug-translators=>bug-wranglers=>assigned

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99929 would have to be solved first btw.


Cheers,
--
/ Xavier Neys
\_ Gentoo Documentation Project
/ French & Internationalisation Lead
\ http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en
/\
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: Food For Thought: Bugzilla Localization? [ In reply to ]
Xavier Neys wrote:
> Looks like we'd need to pass bugs through several filters:
> bug-translators=>bug-wranglers=>assigned

I don't like that idea, it'd only lead to even more duplicates.

Regards,

--
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: Food For Thought: Bugzilla Localization? [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 3 Aug 2005 16:17:38 +0900 Chris White <chriswhite@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| 2) Can people be brought on board to localize bugzilla, as well as
| provide translation of non-english bugs.

No non-English bugs for anything except docs please. It's hard enough
to get the information we need out of bugs as it is...

I'm pretty sure that providing a translated would encourage more
non-English bug submissions too...

--
Ciaran McCreesh
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