Ubuntu: Make packages.ubuntu.com translatable in Launchpad

[Angel Guzman Maeso]

http://packages.ubuntu.com/ is a great search for packages. Many new users use the site the first time when they have problems.

Some people whom I have recommended to use ubuntu, but his native language is not English and have enough problems to use (despite being very intuitive).

My proposal is to translate it to reach even more people and make it even more useful.

This bug is for my usability, soI propose to one hundred paper cuts.

[Artur Rona (ari-tczew)]

Can you send this propose on brainstorm?

[Angel Guzman Maeso (shakaran)]

Done!
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/20435/

[David Planella (dpm)]

http://packages.ubuntu.com is already translatable (just go to e.g. and see the links at the bottom of the page). What does need to be done is to document how translations can be done probably in the wiki or in a link in the page itself.

Currently the recommended way is to submit translations upstream for Debian at http://git.debian.org/?p=webwml/packages.git;a=tree;f=po and then the admin (who works on both sites, the Debian one and the Ubuntu one) will take care of merging the Debian translations to the 'ubuntu-master' branch.

The http://packages.ubuntu.com site has got (very few) strings which differ from debian.packages.org and for which there is currently no way to translate them, so any help on this would be very much appreciated

[David Planella (dpm)]

Sorry, I left an unfinished sentence in my previous comment. I meant that you can go to e.g. http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty-updates/ and see that there are links to translations of the page at the bottom

[Adi Roiban (adiroiban)]

I think that people should use Add/Remove Programs to search for packages.
It's already available in the Main Menu and also works offline.

It would be nice to have packages.ubuntu.com translated, but first we must translate the package descriptions.

[Milo Casagrande (milo)]

Hi guys,

2009/6/30 Adi Roiban <email address hidden>:
> I think that people should use Add/Remove Programs to search for packages.
> It's already available in the Main Menu and also works offline.
>
> It would be nice to have packages.ubuntu.com translated, but first we
> must translate the package descriptions.

I agree that packages description are the most important part, but the
packages.ubuntu.com (and the Debian one too) are also very important.

It is not a way to install software, but it's a way to check
software/packages, their version and also to download the source code
(I happen to use it quite a lot).

For me, it deserves a little bit of attention too. I will set up a
task for the Italian team and we can try to translate it.

David, what do you mean with:

The http://packages.ubuntu.com site has got (very few) strings which
differ from debian.packages.org and for which there is currently no way
to translate them, so any help on this would be very much appreciated

That there is no way to localize the different strings from Ubuntu
version? What is the technology behind it?

Ciao.

--
Milo Casagrande <email address hidden>

[David Planella (dpm)]

Hey Milo,

El dt 30 de 06 de 2009 a les 19:20 +0000, en/na Milo Casagrande va
escriure:
> Hi guys,
>
> 2009/6/30 Adi Roiban <email address hidden>:
> > I think that people should use Add/Remove Programs to search for packages.
> > It's already available in the Main Menu and also works offline.
> >
> > It would be nice to have packages.ubuntu.com translated, but first we
> > must translate the package descriptions.
>
> I agree that packages description are the most important part, but the
> packages.ubuntu.com (and the Debian one too) are also very important.
>
> It is not a way to install software, but it's a way to check
> software/packages, their version and also to download the source code
> (I happen to use it quite a lot).
>
> For me, it deserves a little bit of attention too. I will set up a
> task for the Italian team and we can try to translate it.
>

I agree that its translation might need more attention as well, but I
believe there are higher translation priorities. In any case, the reason
I gave 'Low' importance to the bug was because in fact the site is
already translatable, but I did not want to close it as invalid because
we should probably make it easier to translate. Actually, we should
probably change the summary.

> David, what do you mean with:
>
> The http://packages.ubuntu.com site has got (very few) strings which
> differ from debian.packages.org and for which there is currently no way
> to translate them, so any help on this would be very much appreciated
>
> That there is no way to localize the different strings from Ubuntu
> version? What is the technology behind it?
>

Here's how it works:

The packages.ubuntu.com interface can be translated through standard
gettext .po files.

Since packages.ubuntu.com originates from packages.debian.org and the
source code is in the same repo, the translations should be sent to
Debian first (against the 'master' branch), and then the archive
managers will commit them to the 'ubuntu-master' branch, which will
ultimately make them available to packages.ubuntu.com.

The way the translations are currently synced is the following:

      * Translations are committed _only_ in the 'master' branch (Debian
        translations), which makes them available at packages.debian.org
      * Once committed, the maintainer merges those translations to the
        'ubuntu-master' branch, which makes them available at
        packages.ubuntu.com. There is no translation activity in this
        branch other than the merge, since modifying strings here would
        difficult the next merge from Debian.
      * There are a few original strings which are different between
        Ubuntu and Debian. There is currently no solution for
        translating those, but the maintainer would welcome any
        suggestions and help.

You can see the .po files here:

http://git.debian.org/?p=webwml/packages.git;a=tree;f=po

The POT templates to use for translation are (in order of importance)

      * templates.pot
      * pdo.pot
      * sections.pot
      * langs.pot
      * debtags.pot

== How to start a translation ==

      * Download the POT templates
              * Either go to
                http:/...

[Milo Casagrande (milo)]

Hi,

2009/7/1 David Planella <email address hidden>:
>
> == Proposal ==
>
> Actually, here's an idea: we should contact Frank Lichtenfeld (the guy
> behind packages.ubuntu.com and packages.debian.org) ans see what he
> thinks first, but what about:
>
>      * Create a wiki page in the TranslatingUbuntu space explaining the
>        process
>      * Create a packages.ubuntu.com project in Launchpad (only for
>        translations)
>      * Import translations from
>        http://git.debian.org/?p=webwml/packages.git;a=tree;f=po into
>        Launchpad Translations (either by manually importing the POT/PO
>        files or by mirroring the git branch to a bzr branch).
>      * Add a link to the wiki page with the explanation of the process
>        to the template information text box.
>
> What do you guys think?

The idea of doing the translation through Launchpad would be
interesting, the only problem I can see is with languages that already
have a translation made by Debian teams. Don't want to cause any
frictions between other teams. We need to said it loud and clear that
for doing translation there, first it's necessary to interact with the
Debian team.

For the Ubuntu only strings: if the strings are normally extractable
from the source code, if we can do the translations in Launchpad and
send them back to Debian, even if they get merged with the Debian POT
files, those strings will become "obsolete", but as long as they are
merged with the Ubuntu POT, they should be valid (if I'm not totally
wrong). The problem could be with Debian upstream deleting the
obsolete strings, but Launchpad will anyway preserve them, so we
should be safe with any new import of POT templates.

Obviously, that means that languages that have Debian translations
shouldn't modify them and should only translate the new strings.

Sounds complicated?

--
Milo Casagrande <email address hidden>

[Rhonda D'Vine (rhonda)]

You can contact me any time in case you need any help with getting translations in. The initial report and still current bug description doesn't make any sense to me because the site currently *is* available in different languages and translated already quite a fair amount of it.

The packages.ubuntu.com site has some additional strings, I will have to look into how I can make them available for translating, either directly in the master branch (preferably, to avoid merge troubles on string/code changes), or one can fetch the po file from the ubuntu-master branch which hopefully should contain those additional strings.

I can look into it in the next weeks whether the additional strings are in there and if not, bring them in - but please don't hold your breath, I'm currently pretty busy with things ...

Thanks for the headsup! And ... I noticed that the package descriptions aren't there anymore at all. It seems like there have been some changes to the Packages files in ubuntu about which I didn't get notified, so I am not aware what exactly was changed there and will have to reverse engineer the issue again. This also might take a fair amount of time until I get to it, and I'm sorry for that, but priorities are priorities, and workload is workload, and I have no sponsor for that work. ;)

Enjoy!
Rhonda

[Gabor Kelemen (kelemeng)]

Hi Gerfried

The point of this bug is that Ubuntu translators would like to translate the site as a Launchpad project. Because it has a web based translation tool, which lowers the barrier of entry to many languages, whose translators find it difficult/inconvenient to work with po files in a VCS. Yes, there are such people out there :).

[Rhonda D'Vine (rhonda)]

    Dear Gabor!

* Gabor Kelemen <email address hidden> [2013-05-24 14:38:57 CEST]:
> The point of this bug is that Ubuntu translators would like to translate
> the site as a Launchpad project.

 That's not what the bug description says, but now I noticed that it's
in the bug subject/title, my bad. :)

> Because it has a web based translation tool, which lowers the barrier
> of entry to many languages, whose translators find it
> difficult/inconvenient to work with po files in a VCS. Yes, there are
> such people out there :).

 Sure. Then though, I am uncertain about how it could work. The
translation should definitely get feeded back into git, I do not want to
have the translation just pulled from launchpad on the packages site to
have it available there, it should be available for all users of the
code base. I know little about launchpad translation in that respect,
so if someone who has more insight can notify me about how this could
get done, I'm fine with it. :)

 Enjoy,
Rhonda
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