OLPC Software Code Localization - A Few Things I've Noticed

Fri Oct 26 17:48:33 EDT 2007

On 10/26/07, Ed Trager <ed.trager at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi, everyone,
>
> In response to Xavier Alvarez' request on 10/25 for translators and
> coordinators, I decided to get off the sidelines and take a look at
> OLPC's new Pootle-based L10N infrastructure.
>
> Here are a few things I noticed which I think will be of general
> interest and concern:
>
> (0) CASING/NAMING OF PO FILES PROBLEM:
>
>       (Upper/Lower) Casing of names of po files is inconsistent: For
> example, in Core there is
>       "journal-activity.Journal.po" with upper case "J" for the 2nd
> occurrence of "Journal" but
>       then why isn't "write.write.po" written "write.Write.po"?
>
>       This is a small point, but consistent and inuitive naming of
> these PO files will help
>       everyone. Or am I just failing to understand or intuit what the
> pattern is supposed to be
>       here?

Yes this is a matter of standardisation  that had to be discussed, our
independent pootle platform is still  to young.

(1)  INCONSISTENT NUMBER OF MSGIDs ACROSS DIFFERENT LANGUAGES:
>
>        The other day when I looked at write.write.po for French, there
> were only 10
>        messages in the catalog.  Today, I see that there are 36
> messages which looks a
>        lot closer to what I myself get from "xgettext toolbar.py" on
> the latest code.
>        However, when I
>        checked write.write.po for Thai today, I see that it still has
> only 10 messages.
>
>        Solution (Or at least  A Question Posing As A Possible Solution):
>
>        Does everyone agree that there needs to be a way that all of
> the ".po" files for
>        all languages get updated with the  latest messages  extracted
> via "xgettext"
>        from the latest codebase (toolbar.py, etc.)?

What you are saying is the ideal, we need an automatic way of doing the .POT
update each time a new release of each activity is done, and also provide a
method  to update each AVAILABLE .PO in consequence to the .POT update.

Can this be done with  the actual method of  making activity  bundles?

What appears to be happening right now is perhaps that someone
> decided to work on
>        the French so maybe they ran "xgettext" against Write
> Activity's latest "toolbar.py" and
>        so for French we've now got 36 messages (not all translated --
> in fact, Pootle says there
>        are only 9 out of 58 translated and I have no clue where that
> "58" is coming from
>        because I only find 30 or so when I run "xgettext toolbar.py"
> myself).  BUT, as nobody
>        has yet worked on Thai, there are only 10 messages present for
> Thai.
>
>        I suspect that it is overly optimistic to believe that the best and
>        most willing translators out in the community will always
> double-check by
>        running "xgettext" themselves against the latest code to make
> sure that messages
>        are not missing.  So computer-assisted updating of the PO files
> to contain the
>        very latest set of msgids sounds like a necessary step.

Agree, ok ill let others answer your other concerns..

thx.

(3)  SOFTWARE I18N/L10N REVIEW PROCESS:
>
>        While beginning to translate write.write.po for Thai earlier
> today, I got to this set of
>        msgids:
>
>           #: toolbar.py:543
>           msgid "Lower Case List"
>
>           #: toolbar.py:544
>           msgid "Upper Case List"
>
>        These are two msgids from a dropdown list which also includes
> "Numbered List" and
>        "Bulleted List". The first  item thus refers to a list
> enumerated with lower case
>        Latin letters:
>
>             a. Item One
>             b. Item Two
>             c. Item Three
>
>        ... while the second obviously refers to enumerating a list
> with A, B, C, etc.
>
>        Do we all recognize what the problem is here?  OK, I'm waiting
> for your answers :-).
>        Yes, it also took me half a second to recognize the problem too!
>
>        Using Thailand as an example, it is true that Thais will
> sometimes enumerate lists
>        using Latin upper or lower case letters.  But the norm in a
> Thai document (when one's
>        keyboard in any case is already set to Thai) is to enumerate
> lists using Thai letters,
>        ก, ข, ค, . . . etc.
>
>        And of course in the Arabic speaking world it is common to
> enumerate lists using
>        ت,  ب,  ا , (aleph, be, te, etc. ... )
>
>        And when not enumerating by letters, it is even more common to
> enumerate by digits,
>        which of course must include native Thai, native Arabic, and a
> host of other native
>        numbering systems for other languages and scripts.
>
>        So, in addition to :
>
>            msgid "Numbered List"
>            msgid "Lower Case List"
>            msgid "Upper Case List"
>
>         ... we really need to add:
>
>                 msgid "Arabic Numbered List"
>                 ...
>                 msgid "Devanagari Numbered List"
>                 ...
>                 msgid "Thai Numbered List"
>                 ... etc ...
>
>         If memory serves me, I believe there may be on the order of 17
> or so different native digit sets currently in Unicode.
>
>         And of course, there need to be msgids for enumerating lists
> using different,
>         alphabets:
>
>                msgid "Arabic List"
>                msgid "Devanagari List"
>                msgid "Thai List"
>
>         Of course we cannot have a drop-down list with hundreds of
> different list styles.  That would be completely innappropriate for
> school children.
>
>        So my initial thought is that the Python code for the Write
> application (and any application that requires a drop-down list with
> different list styles -- i.e., probably break the whole thing out into
> a separate reusable class) should include all of the different list
> styles (getting those needed for the "green countries" would be an
> excellent place to start).
>
> Such a Python class should, by default at least, dynamically display
> only those lists appropriate for the current locale.  These should be
> displayed in the dropdown first -- that is, in an Arabic script
> locale, we want to put "Arabic Numeric List" and "Arabic Alphabetical
> List" ahead of "Numbered List" (using Arabic-Indic "Western" digits),
> "Lower Case List",
> and "Upper Case List" (the latter two being Latin letters).
>
> Just my 2 cents ...
>
> Best - Ed
>
> On 10/25/07, Xavier Alvarez <xavi.alvarez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > We seem to be getting the L10n effort under way (in a new server),
> > and the subject pretty much sums up the situation:
> >
> > We need
> > - translators (obviously),
> > - coordinators (that can actually manage each language) and
> > - volunteers (the universal glue?)
> >
> > All languages are welcome, but it should be noted that there's a
> > need for those languages used in the 'green countries', which
> > are: Amharic, Arabic, English, Spanish, French, Hausa, Hindi,
> > Igbo, Nepali, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Thai,
> > Urdu, & Yoruba.
> >
> > I've updated the [[Localization]] page, noting that the previous
> > workflow for submitting translations using tickets is being
> > dropped (translations are going to be primarily on-line), making
> > reference to the [[Pootle]] page (that still needs some
> > club^H^H^H^H polishing) about its use. For future administrators
> > the [[Pootle/Administration]] could be of interest.
> >
> >
> > One of the nice features of Pootle is the ability to have
> > glossaries that are used to propose translated terms dynamically
> > in the web-gui (thus helping keep a homogeneous terminology). So
> > I made rude first approach in [[Pootle/Glossary]] that could also
> > do with some reviewing...
> >
> > If you are interested in participating, at the bottom of the
> > [[Pootle]] page there's a table for signing up.
> > Note: From previous mails, I took the liberty of signing up Khaled
> > Hosny [ar], Simos Xenitellis [el] and Maxim Osipov [ru].
> >
> > Questions, suggestions, ideas, etc. are all welcome!
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Xavier
> >
> > [[Localization]] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Localization
> > [[Pootle]] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pootle
> > [[Pootle/Administration]]
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pootle/Admininstration
> > [[Pootle/Glossary]] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pootle/Glossary
> >
> > --
> > XA
> > =========
> > Don't Panic!  The Answer is 42
> > _______________________________________________
> > Localization mailing list
> > Localization at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization
> >
>

-- 
Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero
One Laptop Per Child
rafael at laptop.org
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