Re: italian translation
Sorry for taking some time (grin) to answer this :)
On Fri, May 12, 2000 at 03:20:46PM +0200, Eugenia Franzoni wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm working on a project for an Italian distribution based on Debian.
(...)
>
> And now for some questions... is there any language other than english
> for which the translation process is in a later stage? Which procedure
> did it follow? Which is the procedure to follow to send the files
> to the maintainers of the packages which are not in the debian CVS? Is it
> ok to send them as bug reports? Is there any documentation I missed
> for translators in the Debian website? Are there any useful scripts
> to manage the distributions, for example to check the consistency
> of a package list?
Ok. I will give you some information on the stage of how far the spanish
translation team has gone (you might find this at
http://www.debian.org/international/Spanish.es.html - not yet translated to
English though):
- the installation has been translated both po files of the boot-floppies
and the installation manual
- some core documentation has also been translated (the FAQ, new
maintainer's guide)
- much of the documentation available elsewhere on the net (FAQs, HOWTOs,
etc..) not specific to Debian but interesting for Linux users, has been
packaged (try to find packages with a -es)
- the web site has been partly translated (although a major revision is
pending)
- some specific packages for Spanish speaking users have been made, not
documentation, but scripts like 'ayuda' (help in spanish) which are intended
to help users becoming acquainted with the Debian GNU/Linux environment.
There currently is a company using this work to make a Debian
GNU/Linux *Spanish* distribution, that comes along with CDs with the Spanish
installation, paper documentation in Spanish and some add-ons like other
comercial people do (non-free but distributable packages, for one)
Thats the stuff done *specific* to Debian, regarding
internationalization there is a lot of work being done regarding
internationalization of KDE and GNOME applications (po files) and GNU
applications, this work is being done outside Debian, and is thus supposed
to be included by maintainers when upstream authors do so.
Thus, regarding program translation I would do the following:
1.- if the program is a Debian-specific package, send the 'po' file (or any
other translated stuff, maybe documentation or configuration files for the
examples/ dir), as a bug report (priority: wishlist) to the maintainer and
also contact him personally. Most maintainers will appreciate this and, if
possible, integrate your changes fast.
2.- if the program is *not* a Debian-specific package, send the 'po' file
both to the maintainer (as above) *and* to the upstream authors. If you do
not do this, the maintainer might add it in the Debian package but not
forward it to the upstream authors. This might add a minor chance of your
translation to be forgotten if the maintainer orphans the package, or in
some other *strange* situations...
There are, however, some stuff pending to do in Debian regarding
internationalization of the whole distribution. I would point out, mostly,
translating package descriptions since it's something dpkg is not able to
work out yet. If you want to do this you have to substitute the whole
Packages file for a translated one, which is not a good approach (it is not
scalable, nor maintainable).
I talked with Wichert on this regard and it seems that the new
package system in works might solve this a better way.
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Eugenia
> ---
> Eugenia Franzoni
> Hops Libri
> http://www.hopslibri.com
> http://www.hops.it
I hope I answered (some) of your questions :)
Best regards
Javi
Reply to: