Translations always get overwritten by imports in projects hosting their translations in LP

[Jiri Grönroos]

This bug is similar to what happened in January when a lot of LP translations were overwritten by upstream imports.

This isn't just a "Ubuntu project feature", same sort of problems seem to occur on Chromium translations.

https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser/translations/+pots/generated-resources/fi/+translate?batch=10&show=all&search=ja+poistu
Located in id: 2766006623206032690 (used in the following branches: trunk, dev, beta, stable)
Located in id: 5731247495086897348 (used in the following branches: trunk, dev, beta, stable)
(This translation was plain wrong and was made by Chrome translator[s]. I fixed this in May here on LP - see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=80488&q=Finnish&colspec=ID%20Stars%20Pri%20Area%20Feature%20Type%20Status%20Summary%20Modified%20Owner%20Mstone%20OS - but it was overwritten by upstream import/translation which I fixed ~30 mins ago.)

https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser/translations/+pots/generated-resources/fi/+translate?batch=10&show=all&search=Aseta+%25{PRODUCT_NAME}+oletukseksi
Located in id: 376466258076168640 (used in the following branches: trunk, dev, beta, stable)
(I fixed this two days ago and now after imports my fix is marked as a suggestion)

Many translations which I do here on LP are actual fixes to upstream errors which I have no access to. I tend to file/check for existing bugs on upstream so that the upstream translators could import fixes from Launchpad. However, it's frustrating to fix bugs here on LP as they seem to be overwritten for no obvious reason. I'm aware of the problems with Chromium translations (which are described in fta's blog) but this doesn't seem to be the real case here.

[Jiri Grönroos (jiri-gronroos)]

Happened again with the latest Chromium import:

https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser/translations/+pots/generated-resources/fi/+translate?batch=10&show=all&search=sheets+of

Located in id: 4091434297613116013 (used in the following branches: trunk, dev, beta, stable)

The original translation was wrong so I fixed it yesterday. Now my fix is marked as a suggestion.

[Jiri Grönroos (jiri-gronroos)]

Happened again 7 hours ago.

My fix is now marked as a suggestion:

https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser/translations/+pots/generated-resources/fi/+translate?batch=10&show=all&search=paperiarkkeja

Located in id: 4091434297613116013 (used in the following branches: trunk, dev, beta, stable)

--

My translation was overwritten and Launchpad doesn't seem to remember it (see https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser/translations/+pots/generated-resources/fi/+filter?person=jiri-gronroos ):

https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser/translations/+pots/generated-resources/fi/+translate?batch=10&show=all&search=plug-in+is+out+of+date.

Located in id: 1195977189444203128 (used in the following branches: trunk, dev, beta, stable)

Same issue here, overwritten and my translation has been lost (Launchpad doesn't remember it)

https://translations.launchpad.net/chromium-browser/translations/+pots/generated-resources/fi/+translate?batch=10&show=all&search=No+speech+heard.

Located in id: 1800124151523561876 (used in the following branches: trunk, dev, beta, stable)

There are many more but those should be enough to give a clue of the problem.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

First of all, Launchpad does not prefer Launchpad translations at all times. Actually, it mostly prefers upstream translations. Only when an upstream translation has been consciously overridden in Ubuntu is it kept when new upstream translations show up.

What you are experiencing seems to be two problems: multi-release translations imports interfering with translations sharing, and the fact that chromium-browser can not really be properly represented in Launchpad.

The former would manifest itself as older upstream translations overriding more recent ones in a different series simply through a package re-upload (in Ubuntu: eg. re-uploading old package in Natty will override translations in Oneiric) or import from a branch on older project series (for chromium-browser, but it has only a single series which imports translations, so it could not be it there). Since we give preference to upstream translations, we should at least ensure they are newer than what we already have in the database.

As for the problem you are having with chromium-browser translations, it really is a fact that Launchpad is not designed to properly represent a fork of a project, which is what you are trying to achieve. Launchpad believes launchpad.net/chromium-browser is the *upstream* for translations, and whenever they are imported from a source tree, it gives them preference as well. Ideally, we'd have special support for this, or at least an option to change what translations are given preference (this has been requested in the past as well). I'd like to make this bug about this particular problem, so I am triaging it as a feature request. It shouldn't be hard to implement, but we are not likely to have time to do that anytime soon.

Alternatively, I know Fabian has done great work with making stuff work better for chromium-translations, and he can still decide to merge translations differently with Launchpad ones before they are imported.

Since Launchpad is open source, we do invite anyone interested to contribute as well, and one can start on https://dev.launchpad.net/. The relevant functionality to start looking at is in lib/lp/translations/model/potmsgset.py mostly passed around as share_with_other_side argument to methods.

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

FWIW, I split the other bug into bug 869264.