[Localization] How do we manage translation effort in Release, process/roadmap?

[Edward Cherlin]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Greg Smith <gregsmitholpc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sayamindu,
>
> Great work, thanks for taking up the gauntlet on this!
>
> One question for you, how much lead time do you need to do the translations?
>
> Assuming something like "final test" starts 15 days before the target
> release date, when do we need to tell the developers to "freeze" all of
> their strings?

We are nowhere near that state. That would be OK if we had enough
localizers working full-time from a previous release that was
completely localized. In the present state of things we have no way to
complete localization in most languages, no matter how much lead time
we specify.

The range on our Pootle server is from 0% translated (Aymara, for
example) to 99% for German. Spanish, the most used, is at 69%, but
almost all of what is missing is in Etoys internals.

We could pick a few languages that are in deployments and are close
enough to finished for this sort of freeze to be meaningful. My
impression as that that would consist of Spanish and French. I invite
you to examine http://dev.laptop.org/translate and draw your own
conclusions.

It would be helpful if we could get a page generated automatically
with some statistics on language projects, but I don't know who could
create it. Sayamindu is rather overwhelmed.

> Possible dates are 90 days before target release day and 60 days before
> target release day.
>
> Let me know which of those you prefer or if you think a different lead
> time is warranted.

A different kind of policy is warranted.

> Thanks,
>
> Greg S

-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
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"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay