[Mailman-i18n] Move to Launchpad?

[David Planella]

Hi Clytie,

2009/9/30 Clytie Siddall <clytie at riverland.net.au>:
> Hi guys :)
>
> <waves>
>
> I've reappeared out of the brain fog [1] and need to catch up on Mailman
> translation.
>

Welcome back :-)

> Although I'm delighted that Launchpad has finally moved to open source, I
> still have some reservations about using it. I'd personally prefer to use
> Pootle, or grab the latest file from bzr.
>
> However, the use of Launchpad means, especially with my intermittent
> capabilities, that I need to be able to check if anyone else has started
> contributing Vietnamese strings to Mailman. It's important that translators
> don't duplicate work, and that can happen, say, with one translating
> offline, and one using Launchpad.
>

Launchpad allows controling who uploads and submits translations
through a permissions system similar to Pootle, but with a slightly
different implementation.

As mentioned in the previous e-mails, translation groups [1] and
translation teams [2] [3] are the basis of this system. In the case of
Mailman, there is a Mailman Translators group already:

https://translations.launchpad.net/+groups/mailman-translators

This group will be a "container" for translation teams appointed by
the Mailman developers to translate Mailman in each particular
language. As such, I'm probably guessing you'll be both the owner (in
Launchpad jargon, basically the one who created the group) and a
member of the Vietnamese team. This will allow you to choose a
subscription policy for the team and control who can join and submit
translations.

Regarding duplicate work, it all boils down to who has permission to
submit translations (i.e. the team's policy and who is a member of a
team) and the communication within the team. As you see, it's not much
different than other open source translation projects.

The only big difference is that Launchpad tries to lower the entry
barrier to contributors and encourage a collaborative translation
effort by allowing anyone with a Launchpad account to submit
translation suggestions. These suggestions will not be used until a
translation team member with permissions reviews them and either
discards or accepts them.

> Does Launchpad have an upload function with overwrite or merge options, like
> Pootle?

Yes. You can either translate online or upload files also through the
web UI. When uploading, you can choose to overwrite all strings which
changed in your PO file or simply add those for which there was no
translations.

Here you can see how you can upload files in Launchpad, taking the
Transmission project as an example:

  https://translations.launchpad.net/transmission/trunk/+pots/transmission/vi/+upload

(Of course, that's just the URL, you can navigate to that location
through the UI)

> If not, can we just commit translations via bzr, and they will be
> merged with the Launchpad files?
>

Yes, this is also possible
(http://blog.launchpad.net/translations/import-translations-from-bazaar-branches),
but it has to be enabled in the project settings.

> Meanwhile, I'll grab the latest vi.po from bzr and update it. :)
>
> from Clytie
>
> Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team
>
> [1] http://www.hfme.org/

I hope this info helped.

Regards,
David.

[1] https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/YourProject/ChoosingAGroup
[2] https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/JoiningATranslationGroup
[3] https://help.launchpad.net/Teams/CreatingAndRunning