There is no Paper Cut Project for Localisation/Translations

[Terje Andre Arnøy]

Currently I am working on translating Lucid Lynx, to make sure that it is available in Norwegian, out of the box. While doing this I encounter many problematic strings and wording that is not that easy to translate. Despite the best effort of those that user their time to make sure that their language is available as a complete option, it is not always easy to determine what wording works and if a translation is informative for the end users.

To make Linux, Ubuntu and it's derivatives better to use, it would be essential to have bug reporting of translations made, so that these can be improved, and thus usability in the users native language enhanced.

[我是 Steppenwolf (jado92mx)]

Very good proposal, Terje!

It is the same in Spanish, specially with the English modals,
translating to another language can lost part of its meaning...

Greetings,
JaD!

[David Planella (dpm)]

Hi Terje,

Thanks for your bug report. Currently you can already report, triage and bugs in translations in the ubuntu-translations project:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-translations

Could you please expand your proposal, so we can see what's missing?

[Vish (vish)]

Thank you for taking the time to make Ubuntu better. Since what you submitted is not really a bug, or a problem in the software, but rather an idea to improve Ubuntu . Thanks for taking the time to share your opinion!

For further information about papercuts criteria, please read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut.

[Terje Andre Arnøy (terjeaar)]

@David Planella

I've been thinking some more about this, and I would describe the problem as such:
1) Say that my friend has installed Ubuntu 10.04 on his PC, and he doesn't feel that sturdy in English, so he wants to use it in Norwegian. Now, ignoring the fact that the Norwegian translation for Lucid is not complete, what does my friend do if he encounters sentences that makes no sense to him or he finds wording that is inconsistent within or across applications? The point being there is no good way of reporting these kind of bugs, errors and inconsistencies, but solving them is essential to the end user experience of the Ubuntu OS, or any other linux distro for that matter. So this is the problem.

These are the challenges:
2) These kind of problems could and probably fall under the Paper Cuts category, but these are very anglo-centric at the moment, meaning terminology inconsistencies etc are based on the English language version of Ubuntu. One could expand the Paper Cuts section to cover these problems, but would that make the current Paper Cuts project unmanagable? It seems that it will expand it to cover things that it was not originally intended to focus on, and would drown out other usability based bugs that are not tied to language.
3) Translation teams need to know about these types of problems, so they can look through the translated strings and change the translations that have bugs filed on them. This kind of feedback is important for translators, as it is not always easy work out what would be a good translation and if the string is translated, it is not always reviewed later as this takes away time from completing translations.
4) The possibility of reporting these kind of bugs is not easy enough, as you would have to log into launchpad and file a bug on the package or project that is affected by translation problems. I think this would be a stumbling block for many end users, and thus we lose out on essential feedback on Ubuntus usability.
5) Following on from this, it is not always relevant to notify the project that a translation isn't good, it is more relevant to file this to the translation team of your language. It is they who can correct the mistake, not the developers, so it is they the bug should be addressed to. The project or package should also be notified, but should not be responsible.

Proposed ways of solving it:
I) Make it easier to file these kind of bugs, with for example a "report language bug" option, that does not require a full registration. The steps could for example be: Go to "System" > "File Language Bug", promting a GUI that asks for (a) Language to file the bug to, (b) What software/package is affected, (c) what sentence or wording was problematic and where did it pop up and (d) email for followup; swish and it is sent off to notify the translation team on launchpad.
II) This relies on a structure within Launchpad similar to the Paper Cuts section, and that has to be in place first, this could also facilitate some discussion among translators, if they find poor translations that they don't know how to translate properly.
III) The point of solving this is also to push as many translations up to 90%...

[Mohamed Amine Ilidrissi (ilidrissi.amine)]

I see this as a problem, and the original reporter explained the motivations behind this, so I am marking as Confirmed.

[David Planella (dpm)]

As it seems no one is stepping up to lead such a project, IÇm marking this as Wishlist

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

@terjeaar: Matthew Thomas has proposed the implementation of a GUI which will allow users to easily propose translation fixes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ContributorConsole