Checkbox : Simplify strings available for translation

Bug #916096 reported by Andrej Znidarsic
30
This bug affects 6 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Checkbox (Legacy)
Won't Fix
Medium
Unassigned
Checkbox Provider - Base
Won't Fix
Medium
Unassigned
Ubuntu Translations
Won't Fix
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Checbox strings are currently made in a way which required a lot of extra effort/ time from trasnlators than it could:

There are many long strings of this type:

PURPOSE:
    This test will test display rotation
STEPS:
    1. Open the Displays application
    2. Select a new rotation value from the dropdown list
    3. Click on Apply
    4. Click on Restore Previous Configuration
    5. Click on Apply
    6. Repeat 2-5 for different rotation values
VERIFICATION:
    Did the display rotation change as expected?

 Consequentially translators need to translate strings PURPOSE, STEPS and VERIFICATION tens of times. Many other strings could also be reused. For example "Click on Apply" or "Click "Test"" appear very often. "Click on the bluetooth icon in menu bar" appears for almost all bluetooth tests and so on. This not only required more work from translators but also makes them less motivated as they need to translate the same strings over and over again within a short span.

If longer strings would be split up into smaller ones work load for translators could decrease required translator's work substantially (in my opinion by about 30-40%).

Tags: job
Revision history for this message
Daniel Manrique (roadmr) wrote :

Hi Andrej,

Thanks for pointing out this problem. You're more knowledgeable than I about the whole translation infrastructure and workflow, so I'd like your input on how to best tackle this problem.

Checkbox's job descriptions are included in textfiles in rfc822 format (see in /usr/share/checkbox/jobs for examples). Thus there are a few differences from strings included in source code. I can't, for instance, have just one PURPOSE string and reuse that easily in my job description files; at least, not without introducing an extra variable-substitution step.

So, do you know of any way to handle this with the current format we're using? could we perhaps format the description field in a way that "splits" the long description into smaller chunks?

Thanks again for your report. I'll set as importance: Medium and Incomplete for checkbox, pending your reply, but once you respond I'd be inclined to set this to either Confirmed or Triaged.

Changed in checkbox:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Gabor Kelemen (kelemeng) wrote :

Hi Daniel

You can split these strings in smaller pieces, by adding lines containing a space and a dot only, see: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Description
So this:

PURPOSE:
    This test will test display rotation
STEPS:
    1. Open the Displays application
    2. Select a new rotation value from the dropdown list
    3. Click on Apply
(snip)

Could become this:

PURPOSE:
 .
    This test will test display rotation
.
STEPS:
.
    1. Open the Displays application
.
    2. Select a new rotation value from the dropdown list
.
    3. Click on Apply

This would fit perfectly for us, but:
- you would need to take special care to remove the empty lines, which will show up in the place of the "space+full stop" lines.
- the problem I reported in the comments 6 and 7 of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-translations/+bug/740146 might still be around. Using one big description string avoids it, but switching back to multiple smaller chunks might expose it again, which would be worse than translating a few duplicate strings. Had no time to check this yet.

Revision history for this message
Daniel Manrique (roadmr) wrote :

Thanks! We'll try the solution you suggest.

Marking this as Triaged.

Changed in checkbox:
status: Incomplete → Triaged
Gabor Kelemen (kelemeng)
Changed in ubuntu-translations:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Medium
summary: - Checkbox requires a lot of translator work
+ Checkbox : Simplify strings available for translation
Daniel Manrique (roadmr)
tags: added: job
Revision history for this message
Zygmunt Krynicki (zyga) wrote :

This bug might be fixable now. We could have three separate fields (verification, steps, purpose) and only one copy of the localized version of those labels. The other bug (apply/test etc being specified differently countless times) should be split out to a separate issue. I have no better way to fix it yet.

affects: checkbox → checkbox-legacy
Changed in plainbox-provider-checkbox:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Medium
Zygmunt Krynicki (zyga)
Changed in checkbox-legacy:
status: Triaged → Won't Fix
Changed in plainbox-provider-checkbox:
status: Triaged → Won't Fix
Changed in ubuntu-translations:
status: Triaged → Won't Fix
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