Hi, Here is the follow-up to the "Translated Python documentation" thread on python-dev [1]_, as a PEP describing the steps to make Python Documentation Translation official on accessible on docs.python.org. .. [1] [Python-Dev] Translated Python documentation (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2017-February/147416.html) You can also read it online at https://github.com/JulienPalard/peps/blob/master/pep-0xxx.rst ============================== PEP: XXX Title: Python Documentation Translations Version: $Revision$ Last-Modified: $Date$ Author: Victor Stinner <vstinner@redhat.com>, Inada Naoki <songofacandy@gmail.com>, Julien Palard <julien@palard.fr> Status: Draft Type: Process Created: 04-Mar-2017 Post-History: Abstract ======== The intent of this PEP is to make existing translations of the Python Documentation more accessible and discoverable. By doing so, attracting and motivating new translators and new translations. Translated documentation will be hosted on python.org. Examples of two active translation teams: * http://docs.python.org/fr/: French * http://docs.python.org/jp/: Japanese http://docs.python.org/en/ will redirect to http://docs.python.org/. Sources of translated documentation will be hosted in the Python Documentation organization on GitHub: https://github.com/python-docs/. Contributors will have to sign the Python Contributor Agreement (CLA) and the license will be the PSF License. Motivation ========== On the french ``#python-fr`` IRC channel on freenode, it's not rare to meet people who don't speak english and so are unable to read the Python official documentation. Python wants to be widely available, to all users, in any language: that's also why Python 3 now allows any non-ASCII identifiers: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3131/#rationale There are a least 3 groups of people who are translating the Python documentation in their mother language (french [16]_ [17]_ [18]_, japanese [19]_ [20]_, spanish [21]_), even though their translation are not visible on d.p.o. Other less visible and less organized groups are also translating in their mother language, we heard of Russian, Chinese, Korean, maybe some others we didn't found yet. This PEP defines rules to move translations on docs.python.org so they can easily be found by developers, newcomers and potential translators. The Japanese team currently (March 2017) translated ~80% of the documentation, french team ~20%. French translation went from 6% to 23% in 2016 [13]_ with 7 contributors [14]_, proving a translation team can be faster than documentation mutates. Quoting Xiang Zhang about Chinese translations: I have seen several groups trying to translate part of our official doc. But their efforts are disperse and quickly become lost because they are not organized to work towards a single common result and their results are hold anywhere on the Web and hard to find. An official one could help ease the pain. Rationale ========= Translation ----------- Issue tracker ''''''''''''' Considering that issues opened about translations may be written in the translation language, which can be considered noise but at least is inconsistent, issues should be placed outside `bugs.python.org <https://bugs.python.org/>`_ (b.p.o). As all translation must have their own github project (see `Repository for Po Files`_), they must use the associated github issue tracker. Considering the noise induced by translation issues redacted in any languages which may beyond every warnings land in b.p.o, triage will have to be done. Considering that translations already exist and are not actually a source of noise in b.p.o, an unmanageable amount of work is not to be expected. Considering that Xiang Zhang and Victor Stinner are already triaging, and Julien Palard is willing to help on this task, noise on b.p.o is not to be expected. Also, language team coordinators (see `Language Team`_) should help triaging b.p.o by properly indicating, in the issue author language if needed, the right issue tracker. Branches '''''''' Translation teams should focus on last stable versions, and use tools (scripts, translation memory, …) to automatically translate what is done in one branch to other branches. .. note:: Translation memories are a kind of database of previously translated paragraphs, even removed ones. See also `Sphinx Internationalization <http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/intl.html>`_. The three stable branches will be translated [12]_: 2.7, 3.5, and 3.6. The scripts to build the documentation of older branches have to be modified to support translation [12]_, whereas these branches now only accept security-only fixes. The development branch (master) should have a lower translation priority than stable branches. But docsbuild-scripts should build it anyway so it is possible for a team to work on it to be ready for the next release. Hosting ------- Domain Name, Content negociation and URL '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Different translation can be told appart by changing one of: Country Code Top Level Domain (CCTLD), path segment, subdomain, or by content negociation. Buying a CCTLD for each translations is expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes almost impossible when already registered, this solution should be avoided. Using subdomains like "es.docs.python.org" or "docs.es.python.org" is possible but confusing ("is it `es.docs.python.org` or `docs.es.python.org`?"). Hyphens in subdomains like `pt-br.doc.python.org` in uncommon and SEOMoz [23]_ correlated the presence of hyphens as a negative factor. Usage of underscores in subdomain is prohibited by the RFC1123 [24]_, section 2.1. Finally using subdomains means creating TLS certificates for each languages, which is more maintenance, and will probably causes us troubles in language pickers if, like for version picker, we want a preflight to check if the translation exists in the given version: preflight will probably be blocked by same-origin-policy. Wildcard TLS certificates are very expensive. Using content negociation (HTTP headers ``Accept-Language`` in the request and ``Vary: Accept-Language``) leads to a bad user experience where they can't easily change the language. According to Mozilla: "This header is a hint to be used when the server has no way of determining the language via another way, like a specific URL, that is controlled by an explicit user decision." [25]_. As we want to be able to easily change the language, we should not use the content negociation as a main language determination, so we need somthing else. Last solution is to use the URL path, which looks readable, allows for an easy switch from a language to another, and nicely accepts hyphens. Typically something like: "docs.python.org/de/". Example with a hyphen: "docs.python.org/pt-BR/" As for version, sphinx-doc does not support compiling for multiple languages, so we'll have full builds rooted under a path, exactly like we're already doing with versions. So we can have "docs.python.org/de/3.6/" or "docs.python.org/3.6/de/". Question is "Does the language contains multiple version or does version contains multiple languages?" As versions exists in any cases, and translations for a given version may or may not exists, we may prefer "docs.python.org/3.6/de/", but doing so scatter languages everywhere. Having "/de/3.6/" is clearer about "everything under /de/ is written in deutch". Having the version at the end is also an habit taken by readers of the documentation: they like to easily change the version by changing the end of the path. So we should use the following pattern: "docs.python.org/LANGUAGE_TAG/VERSION/". Current documentation is not moved to "/en/", but "docs.python.org/en/" will redirect to "docs.python.org/en/". Language Tag '''''''''''' A common notation for language tags is the IETF Language Tag [3]_ [4]_ based on ISO 639, alghough gettext uses ISO 639 tags with underscores (ex: ``pt_BR``) instead of dashes to join tags [5]_ (ex: ``pt-BR``). Examples of IETF Language Tags: ``fr`` (French), ``jp`` (Japanese), ``pt-BR`` (Orthographic formulation of 1943 - Official in Brazil). It is more common to see dashes instead of underscores in URLs [6]_, so we should use IETF language tags, even if sphinx uses gettext internally: URLs are not meant to leak the underlying implementation. It's uncommon to see capitalized letters in URLs, and docs.python.org don't use any, so it may hurt readability by attracting the eye on it, like in: "https://docs.python.org/pt-BR/3.6/library/stdtypes.html". RFC 5646 (Tags for Identifying Languages (IETF)) section-2.1 [7]_ tells the tags are not case sensitive. As the RFC allows lower case, and it enhances readability, we should use lowercased tags like ``pt-br``. It's redundant to display both language and country code if they're the same, typically "de-DE", "fr-FR", although it make sense, respectively "Deutch as spoken in Germany" and "French as spoken in France", it's not a usefull information for the reader. So we may drop those redundencies. We should obviously keep the country part when it make sense like "pt-BR" for "Portuguese as spoken in Brazil". So we should use IETF language tags, lowercased, like ``/fr/``, ``/pt-br/``, ``/de/`` and so on. Fetching And Building Translations '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Currently docsbuild-scripts are building the documentation [8]_. These scripts should be modified to fetch and build translations. Building new translations is like building new versions, so we're adding complexity, but not that much. Two steps should be configurable distinctively: Build a new language, and add it to the language picker. This allows a transition step between "we accepted the language" and "it is translated enough to be made public", during this step, translators can review their modifications on d.p.o without having to build the documentation locally. From the translations repositories, only the ``.po`` files should be opened by the docsbuild-script to keep the attack surface and probable bugs sources at a minimum. This mean no translation can patch sphinx to advertise their translation tool. (This specific feature should be handled by sphinx anyway [9]_). Community --------- Mailing List '''''''''''' The `doc-sig`_ mailing list will be used to discuss cross-language changes on translated documentations. There is also the i18n-sig list but it's more oriented towards i18n APIs [1]_, than translation the Python documentation. .. _i18n-sig: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/i18n-sig .. _doc-sig: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/doc-sig Chat '''' Python community being highly active on IRC, we should create a new IRC channel on freenode, typically #python-doc for consistency with the mailing list name. Each language coordinator can organize its own team, even by choosing another chat system if the local usage asks for it. As local teams will write in their native languages, we don't want each team in a single channel, and it's also natural for the local teams to reuse their local channels like "#python-fr" for french translators. Repository for PO Files ''''''''''''''''''''''' Considering that each translation teams may want to use different translation tools, and that those tools should easily be synchronized with git, all translations should expose their ``.po`` files via a git repository. Considering that each translation will be exposed via git repositories, and that Python has migrated to GitHub, translations will be hosted on github. For consistency and discoverability, all translations should be in the same github organization and named according to a common pattern. Considering that we want translations to be official, and that Python already have a github organization, translations should be hosted as projects of the `Python documentation GitHub organization`_. For consistency, translations repositories should be called ``python-docs-LANGUAGE_TAG`` [22]_. The docsbuild-scripts may enforce this rule by refusing to fetch outside of the Python organization or a wrongly named repository. The CLA bot may be used on the translation repositories, but with a limited effect as local coordinators may synchronize themselves translations from an external tool like transifex, loosing in the process who translated what. Version can be hosted on different repositories, different directories or different branches. Storing them on different repositories will probably pollute the Python documentation github organization. As it is typical and natural to use branches to separate versions, branches should be used to do so. .. _Python documentation GitHub organization: https://github.com/python-docs/ Translation tools ''''''''''''''''' Most of the translation work is actually done on Transifex [15]_. Other tools may be used later https://pontoon.mozilla.org/ and http://zanata.org/ Contributor Agreement ''''''''''''''''''''' Contributions to translated documentation will be requested to sign the Python Contributor Agreement (CLA): https://www.python.org/psf/contrib/contrib-form/ Language Team ''''''''''''' Each language team should have one coordinator responsible to: - Manage the team - Choose and manage the tools its team will use (chat, mailing list, …) - Ensure contributors understand and agree with the CLA - Ensure quality (grammar, vocabulary, consistency, filtering spam, ads, …) - Do redirect to GitHub issue tracker issues related to its language on bugs.python.org The license will be the `PSF License <https://docs.python.org/3/license.html>`_, and copyright should be transferable to PSF later. Alternatives ------------ Simplified English '''''''''''''''''' It would be possible to introduce a "simplified english" version like wikipedia did [10]_, as discussed on python-dev [11]_, targetting english learners and childrens. Pros: It yields a single other translation, theorically readable by everyone, and reviewable by current maintainers. Cons: Subtle details may be lost, and translators from english to english may be hard to find as stated by Wikipedia:

The main English Wikipedia has 5 million articles, written by nearly 140K active users; the Swedish Wikipedia is almost as big, 3M articles from only 3K active users; but the Simple English Wikipedia has just 123K articles and 871 active users. That's fewer articles than Esperanto!

Changes ======= Migrate GitHub Repositories --------------------------- We (authors of this PEP) already own french and japanese Git repositories, so moving them to the Python documentation organization will not be a problem. We'll however follow the `New Translation Procedure`_. Patch docsbuild-scripts to Compile Translations ----------------------------------------------- Docsbuild-script must be patched to: - List the languages tags to build along with the branches to build. - List the languages tags to display in the language picker. - Find translation repositories by formatting ``github.com:python-docs/python-docs-{language_tag}.git`` (See `Repository for Po Files`_) - Build translations for each branches and each languages Patched docsbuild-scripts must only open ``.po`` files from translation repositories. List coordinators in the devguide --------------------------------- Add a page or a section with an empty list of coordinators to the devguide, each new coordinators will be added to this list. Create sphinx-doc Language Picker --------------------------------- Highly similar to the version picker, a language picker must be implemented. This language picker must be configurable to hide or show a given language. Enhance rendering of untranslated fuzzy translations ---------------------------------------------------- It's an opened sphinx issue [9]_, but we'll need it so we'll have to work on it. Translated, fuzzy, and untranslated paragraphs should be differentiated. (Fuzzy paragraphs have to warn the reader what he's reading may be out of date.) New Translation Procedure ========================= Designate a Coordinator ----------------------- The first step is to designate a coordinator, see `Language Team`_, The coordinator must sign the CLA. The coordinator should be added to a list of translation coordinator on the devguide. Create github repository ------------------------ Create a repository named "python-docs-{LANGUAGE_TAG}" on the Python documentation github organization (See `Repository For Po Files`_.), and grant the language coordinator push rights to this repository. Add support for translations in docsbuild-scripts ------------------------------------------------- As soon as the translation hits its firsts commits, update the docsbuild-scripts configuration to build the translation (but not displaying it in the language picker). Add translation to the language picker -------------------------------------- As soon as the translation hits: - 100% of bugs.html with proper links to the language repository issue tracker. - 100% of tutorial - 100% of library/functions (builtins) the translation can be added to the language picker. Previous discussions ==================== - `[Python-ideas] Cross link documentation translations (January, 2016)`_ - `[Python-ideas] Cross link documentation translations (January, 2016)`_ - `[Python-ideas] https://docs.python.org/fr/ ? (March 2016)`_ .. _[Python-ideas] Cross link documentation translations (January, 2016): https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2016-January/038010.html .. _[Python-Dev] Translated Python documentation (Febrary 2016): https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2017-February/147416.html .. _[Python-ideas] https://docs.python.org/fr/ ? (March 2016): https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2016-March/038879.html References ========== .. [1] [I18n-sig] Hello Python members, Do you have any idea about Python documents? (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/i18n-sig/2013-September/002130.html) .. [2] [Doc-SIG] Localization of Python docs (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/doc-sig/2013-September/003948.html) .. [3] Tags for Identifying Languages (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646) .. [4] IETF language tag (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IETF_language_tag) .. [5] GNU Gettext manual, section 2.3.1: Locale Names (https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Locale-Names.html) .. [6] Semantic URL: Slug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_URL#Slug) .. [7] Tags for Identifying Languages: Formatting of Language Tags (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.1.1) .. [8] Docsbuild-scripts github repository (https://github.com/python/docsbuild-scripts/) .. [9] i18n: Highlight untranslated paragraphs (https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/1246) .. [10] Wikipedia: Simple English (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) .. [11] Python-dev discussion about simplified english (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2017-February/147446.html) .. [12] Passing options to sphinx from Doc/Makefile (https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/57acb82d275ace9d9d854b156611e641f68...) .. [13] French translation progression (https://mdk.fr/pycon2016/#/11) .. [14] French translation contributors (https://github.com/AFPy/python_doc_fr/graphs/contributors?from=2016-01-01&to=2016-12-31&type=c) .. [15] Python-doc on Transifex (https://www.transifex.com/python-doc/) .. [16] French translation (https://www.afpy.org/doc/python/) .. [17] French translation github (https://github.com/AFPy/python_doc_fr) .. [18] French mailing list (http://lists.afpy.org/mailman/listinfo/traductions) .. [19] Japanese translation (http://docs.python.jp/3/) .. [20] Japanese github (https://github.com/python-doc-ja/python-doc-ja) .. [21] Spanish translation (http://docs.python.org.ar/tutorial/3/index.html) .. [22] [Python-Dev] Translated Python documentation: doc vs docs (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2017-February/147472.html) .. [23] Domains - SEO Best Practices | Moz (https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain) .. [24] Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Application and Support (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1123.txt) .. [25] Accept-Language (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Accept-Language) Copyright ========= This document has been placed in the public domain. .. Local Variables: mode: indented-text indent-tabs-mode: nil sentence-end-double-space: t fill-column: 70 coding: utf-8 End: -- Julien Palard https://mdk.fr