On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, Li Yang-r58472 wrote:
>
> So as I argued in a previous email, non-native English speakers tend to
> be more confused by the policies and processes. I also don't think it's
> necessary to translate the technical documents. To be a software
> developer, one has to be educated or experienced in technical terms.
> Technical discussion can be done without too much requirement to grammar
> and emotional expressing. The translated document of policies and
> processes will help these people to understand the process better and go
> smoother in the process.
I do agree.
I think that the policies and processes parts of the documentation are
things that make total sense to encourage translation of, because it's
entirely possible that those are interesting and valid even to the people
who aren't necessarily directly involved in the actual coding, and may
well be relevant to managers etc who may not be _directly_ involed with
the rest of the kernel developers.
In fact, I suspect pretty much any documentation (whether technical or
about processes and/or style) makes sense to have translated if the energy
and ability to do that exists. I suspect the "policies and processes"
kinds of docs make _more_ sense to translate initially, simply because
they are approachable on their own - but I certainly would never
discourage anybody from translating anything at all.
That said, I don't think that merging the result into the standard kernel
makes sense - like it or not, right now English ends up being required
to be part of actually getting things into the "standard" kernel, and as
such, at _some_ point there has to be a connection point that switches
over to English, and trying to make the translations be an in-kernel thing
is thus kind of pointless.
But as part of some "documentation site", it makes 100% sense.
And sometimes maybe the issue isn't even just about straight translations,
but also perhaps about explaining cultural differences that aren't
mentioned at all in the documentation, just because people in the west end
up taking certain things for granted and it doesn't "need" documenting..
Linus
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>
> So as I argued in a previous email, non-native English speakers tend to
> be more confused by the policies and processes. I also don't think it's
> necessary to translate the technical documents. To be a software
> developer, one has to be educated or experienced in technical terms.
> Technical discussion can be done without too much requirement to grammar
> and emotional expressing. The translated document of policies and
> processes will help these people to understand the process better and go
> smoother in the process.
I do agree.
I think that the policies and processes parts of the documentation are
things that make total sense to encourage translation of, because it's
entirely possible that those are interesting and valid even to the people
who aren't necessarily directly involved in the actual coding, and may
well be relevant to managers etc who may not be _directly_ involed with
the rest of the kernel developers.
In fact, I suspect pretty much any documentation (whether technical or
about processes and/or style) makes sense to have translated if the energy
and ability to do that exists. I suspect the "policies and processes"
kinds of docs make _more_ sense to translate initially, simply because
they are approachable on their own - but I certainly would never
discourage anybody from translating anything at all.
That said, I don't think that merging the result into the standard kernel
makes sense - like it or not, right now English ends up being required
to be part of actually getting things into the "standard" kernel, and as
such, at _some_ point there has to be a connection point that switches
over to English, and trying to make the translations be an in-kernel thing
is thus kind of pointless.
But as part of some "documentation site", it makes 100% sense.
And sometimes maybe the issue isn't even just about straight translations,
but also perhaps about explaining cultural differences that aren't
mentioned at all in the documentation, just because people in the west end
up taking certain things for granted and it doesn't "need" documenting..
Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/