Consequences of "Open" translation permissions not obvious

[Sergio Zanchetta]

In Launchpad there are many projects with no translation policy. This lets anyone translate them, resulting in bad translation quality, without the project maintainer realizing.

[Carlos Perelló Marín (carlos)]

Ubuntu doesn't have OPEN permission, but Structured.

[Carlos Perelló Marín (carlos)]

Launchpad is a tool to be used by external projects. As a tool, we give the freedom to choose how they projects are handled. We just provide the infrastructure. If the developers decide to use OPEN permissions is up to them and I don't think that force them to use something is good. If you think that's causing a quality problem, you should file bugs against those projects.

[Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h)]

I didn't intend in that way.
I meant that this bug affects Ubuntu quality, so it has to be fixed.
I can't put in here every project with this problem, every day new projects are registered in Launchpad.

[Carlos Perelló Marín (carlos)]

As I said, Ubuntu is not using OPEN mode, and thus, I don't see the relation between projects using open mode and the quality in Ubuntu translations. The main problems we have right now is the fact that some translation teams are adding a lot of people without even checking whether those people are good translators, and that's also outside our control right now. Said that, we are in the process of improve Ubuntu procedures to prevent this to happen, but take in mind that it's more a social problem than a tool problem. We are working on improve Launchpad as a tool to mitigate that social problem, but if the ones taking the decision for a language don't care about quality, we cannot do anything from Launchpad, that's something to bring to the Ubuntu community council.

[Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h)]

2008/3/4, Carlos Perelló Marín <email address hidden>:
> As I said, Ubuntu is not using OPEN mode, and thus, I don't see the
> relation between projects using open mode and the quality in Ubuntu
> translations. The main problems we have right now is the fact that some
> translation teams are adding a lot of people without even checking
> whether those people are good translators, and that's also outside our
> control right now. Said that, we are in the process of improve Ubuntu
> procedures to prevent this to happen, but take in mind that it's more a
> social problem than a tool problem. We are working on improve Launchpad
> as a tool to mitigate that social problem, but if the ones taking the
> decision for a language don't care about quality, we cannot do anything
> from Launchpad, that's something to bring to the Ubuntu community
> council.
>

I wasn't talking about translation groups. That's another problem.

I DO know that Ubuntu is not using open mode, I meant packages
included in a standard installation.

For example, Gutsy had encrypted File system as a new feature.

There is a package (EncFS) that had (not now because I contacted the
owner) open mode.
Does this package the one used by Gutsy?
Maybe I'm wrong, tell me if so.

>
> --
> Several projects have open translations in launchpad and this cause very bad translation quality.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198305
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Sergio, if you ask upstream projects why they're using Open translation permissions and all/most of them say that they didn't realize what that meant, then please get back to us. Maybe we should explain the permissions better when project maintainers are setting up translations in Launchpad.

[Carlos Perelló Marín (carlos)]

I think you are confused with how Launchpad works. For the example you used, encfs is not available to be translated in Ubuntu because is a package from Universe, and as you can see at https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/+source/encfs we don't offer anything to be translated. In the other hand, the project encfs, choose to use Launchpad to handle its translations and you can find it from https://translations.launchpad.net/encfs .

Those are two different URLs and two different contexts. Ubuntu doesn't use directly anything from the second URL, those translations are under maintainer's control that will end in their released tarballs. Once they release a new encfs version, Ubuntu packages it and then, those translations are used, but is the same procedure even if encfs doesn't use Launchpad at all. That's why we cannot force any translation mode for them, Launchpad is not only about Ubuntu, Ubuntu is just another project using Launchpad, a huge one, but still just another project.

I'm not sure whether this clarifies the issue for you. If it's clear enough now, could you give us some input about what confused you to believe that both were tied so much? If it's not clear enough, just tell us it and we will try to explain it better.

[Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h)]

First of all, thank you two for your quick response.

@Carlos

Thank you very much for your explanation.
It clarifies things.

@Matthew
I think you point out exactly the problem.
I contacted two distinct people (4 projects) asking them to structure
translation permission because of bad quality translations.

They did it and they have been even grateful to know this.
They wasn't aware about this problem.

Probably it would be nice to explain better the effects of open
translation and maybe suggest to structurate it.

(I have been too drastic using "mandatory" in my bug report, I'm sorry
about this.)

2008/3/5, Carlos Perelló Marín <email address hidden>:
> I think you are confused with how Launchpad works. For the example you
> used, encfs is not available to be translated in Ubuntu because is a
> package from Universe, and as you can see at
> https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/+source/encfs we don't
> offer anything to be translated. In the other hand, the project encfs,
> choose to use Launchpad to handle its translations and you can find it
> from https://translations.launchpad.net/encfs .
>
> Those are two different URLs and two different contexts. Ubuntu doesn't
> use directly anything from the second URL, those translations are under
> maintainer's control that will end in their released tarballs. Once they
> release a new encfs version, Ubuntu packages it and then, those
> translations are used, but is the same procedure even if encfs doesn't
> use Launchpad at all. That's why we cannot force any translation mode
> for them, Launchpad is not only about Ubuntu, Ubuntu is just another
> project using Launchpad, a huge one, but still just another project.
>
> I'm not sure whether this clarifies the issue for you. If it's clear
> enough now, could you give us some input about what confused you to
> believe that both were tied so much? If it's not clear enough, just tell
> us it and we will try to explain it better.
>
>
> --
> Several projects have open translations in launchpad and this cause very bad translation quality.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198305
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Milo Casagrande (milo)]

As I said to Sergio back via email in our mailing list, the best solutions to this is: working with upstream.

It's not an easy task, and not something we can achieve in the short time, but that's the best thing we can do to improve not only Ubuntu, but all distros using those projects. This is something I personally do, it takes you months to see the results... but that gives you the best results.

One thing we (well... probably Launchpad) can do, as Matthew said, is talking more to the projects maintainers about the translation teams that exist inside Launchpad. For "talking" I mean explaining to them what are the advantages of "using" a translation team. I don't know what's the procedure of importing a project inside Launchpad, what does it involve, but an explanation page on this issue would be great, pointing out the translation teams, the best quality of translations...

That could be a solution for projects coming in Launchpad, but there are lots of projects outside there and we can't be everywhere... or reach everybody... or force somebody... it's up to us as translators trying to improve this (i18n & l10n are not tasks that should be taken lightly in these days... well... nothing should be... but that's another point :) ).

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

This is now documented on https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/YourProject#Choosing%20a%20permissions%20policy