I am CC'ing Danilo Segan (Launchpad translations team lead) on this message. Danilo, please correct any misconceptions I have about Launchpad translations, or provide any other comments that you think would help us in this transition. On Jul 21, 2009, at 6:20 AM, David Planella wrote:
Hi Barry and all,
Hi David,
If the final decision is to use Launchpad for translations as well, I'd suggest to publish all branches for translations (2.1, 2.2 and 3.0), clearly indicating the status of each version (e.g. development focus, future development, maintenance-only) in the description of the translation template. The (relatively) new feature [1] [2] of automatically uploading new translation templates upon commit on a bzr branch would certainly make this easier. Message sharing between branches is also an interesting feature not yet widely announced but already in use. It effectively allows translations to be automatically shared across branches, which for translators means that they only have to translate in one branch and those translations with identical msgids will be instantly translated in the other branches.
I've now done this. I've registered the 2.1, 2.2, and 3.0 branches as the translation branches for Mailman series of the same names. However, I am thinking about splitting out the catalogs and .po files into a separate branch, at least for MM3 because I'd like to distribute them as a separate plugin. If/when I get around to that I'll fiddle with the translation branches. I'm not actually sure how useful it is to have a translation branch for 2.1. Note that I did /not/ upload all the .po files. I think the legal clearance for the 2.1 translations is sketchy in places. I want to clear this up, definitely for 3.0 if not also for 2.2. I think to do this correctly will require starting from scratch and using Launchpad permissions to control who can approve and upload translations for 2.2. I know it's a shame to lose all of our 2.1 translations, but I'm confident we can leverage the community to help us out. Launchpad supports sharing translations, which is awesome, but I think will probably not help us much since 2.2 still uses %-strings but 3.0 uses $-strings. However, if we're not able to use the 2.1 translations, perhaps Mark can consider switching to $-strings for Mailman 2.2 also.
Then again, I feel I must warn that I might be a bit biased, since I also work for Canonical as the Ubuntu Translations Coordinator :-).
Danilo has set up a translation group for Mailman translators. We'll need to set up individual language teams inside Launchpad specifically for the Mailman project. Danilo has told me that while there's a GNU Translations group in Launchpad, it's not very active. Their names will be of the form mailman-l10n-xx where xx is the language code. As David implies, there's already a mailman-l10n-ca for Catalan which he owns, so perhaps we can use that as a guinea pig. We need to add that team to the Mailman Translation group, but we have to be careful about its membership and permissions. As I understand it, the proper legal framework for translations should be: * Every person who joins a mailman translation team should officially disclaim copyright with the Free Software Foundation. I will help coordinate that effort. * We need the individual translation teams to restrict membership to ensure that its members have signed the disclaimer form. The team owners will be the gatekeepers so it's up to me to make sure the team owners understand their responsibility before adding the team to the Mailman translation group. * Once we get disclaimer forms, we can accept that contributor's translations.
If there are concerns, questions, or complaints about Launchpad's translation services, feel free to bring that up here or in the Launchpad public forums. I'll answer as best I can or find an expert on that part of the system. From my perspective, it would be nice to re-integrate this part of the development/release cycle.
Or on IRC for those who prefer it: #launchpad on Freenode. I'm usually there (dpm) but most importantly the Launchpad Translations developers are also there, and we're always glad to help with any questions or requests.
David, Danilo, let me know if the above makes sense. If you have anything to add either technically, legally, or logistically, please let us know. I plan on updating http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/ Internationalization with all the new workflow once it's settled. Thanks everyone, -Barry