Comment 3 for bug 668251

El dv 12 de 11 de 2010 a les 07:38 +0000, en/na Vojtěch Trefný va
escriure:
> This bug affects Czech localization of GNOME.
> Although translations are complete in the upstream Ubuntu shows
> original English strings. Most strings of the affected applications
> are translated, but some of them not. In the GNOME upstream, they are
> 100 % translated.
> It occurs in Ubuntu 10.10, but I have senn this in several last
> releases. There is obviously some problem on the way from the upstream
> to users' systems.
>
> Some examples:
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1309518/nautilus.png
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1309518/menu.png
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1309518/hamster.png
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1309518/replace.png
>
> This completely destroys translators' effort to bring translated
> environment and Ubuntu gets rating as "half-translated" in many
> reviews

Hi Vojtěch,

Thanks for reporting this bug. I can understand the frustration in
getting some non-translated strings. However, this is not due to the
Launchpad Translations infrastructure for translating Ubuntu, but rather
due to the workflow in which translations are imported. Hence, this is
not an Ubuntu-specific issue, but rather one that can affect any
distribution, since it has to do with when translations are packaged
from upstream.

Let me give you some background:

In general, whenever there is a release of a given project upstream,
there is a new Ubuntu package created shortly after, which contains the
upstream translations as well. However, this only applies during the
development cycle of Ubuntu. After an Ubuntu release, only packages with
important security fixes are allowed to be uploaded. We do this to
ensure the stability and quality of the stable release [1]. What this
means is that if an upstream project is released outside the window of
an Ubuntu development cycle period, there will be no package in Ubuntu
for it until the next cycle, which also means translations might well be
out of date. It is a pure matter of release alignment.

Furthermore, even if releases are aligned, it can be that there isn't a
package created for Ubuntu. Remember that many of the packages are
maintained by volunteers, and be it for lack of time or any other
matter, it can be that packages are not updated for a while.

In summary, this means that if a translation hasn't made it to a
package, after an Ubuntu release incomplete translations cannot be
updated. However, the language pack mechanism comes to the rescue here:
it was designed precisely to address this problem.

For any application in the Ubuntu main repository, we periodically
release language packs independently of applications. In practice, this
means that translations can be completed even after release either
translating them in Launchpad or manually uploading the upstream
translations.

Also note that the Launchpad Translations developers are currently
working on providing a better upstream integration for translations that
will directly address this issue. In the future, translations will be
directly imported from the upstream VCS branches instead of having to
wait to import them from packages.

Let me now comment on two of the examples you've added (I cannot comment
on the other two because I lack the context of which applications you
are reporting):

Nautilus
--------

The "Restore Selected Items" string was translated on the 29th of
September [2], and the last stable nautilus package for Maverick was
uploaded on the 28th [3], hence the translations missed making it in
Ubuntu for a day. You can check the status of translations in the
nautilus package by running the 'apt-get source nautilus' command, and
in the downloaded nautilus folder you'll see that the cs.po file
directly fetched from upstream unfortunately does not contain the
"Restore Selected Items" string.

      * Solution: you can fetch the upstream translation from [4] and
        upload it in [5] choosing the "Imported translation" option.
        Once imported, the translations should make it to the next
        language packs. Note that we haven't released any Maverick
        language packs yet, as we're right now redesigning a better
        schedule for language pack updates [6], but we're planning to do
        it soon.

Hamster
-------

In this particular case, the upstream translation [7] is not complete,
that's why it's not complete in Ubuntu, either.

If you want to discuss anything related to translations or if you need
any help, please feel free to contact the Ubuntu translations team as
decribed below, and we'll be glad to help:

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/Contact/

Thanks!

Regards,
David.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates
[2] http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=ecc583092aa333081205470c7cca7fb1aa68cb81
[3] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/1:2.32.0-0ubuntu1
[4] http://l10n.gnome.org/POT/nautilus.gnome-2-32/nautilus.gnome-2-32.cs.po
[5] https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+source/nautilus/+pots/nautilus/cs/+upload
[6] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/LanguagePackUpdatesSchedule
[7] http://l10n.gnome.org/vertimus/hamster-applet/master/po/cs

 affects ubuntu-translations
 assignee ubuntu-l10n-cs

--
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
www.ubuntu.com / www.davidplanella.wordpress.com
www.identi.ca/dplanella / www.twitter.com/dplanella