Talk:Translation Workflow: Difference between revisions

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Transferring the Danish translations of the first batch of pages to the new framework, I came across a few oddities:
{{Note|1=If you find pages with any of the problems discussed here, please amend the English page.  If you are not able to do that, leave a message for the admin team.}}
 
__TOC__
*In one page the ;) smiley was used inside a parenthesized remark. This resulted in the translation of that section to be marked as "out of date". Apparently the translation system keeps an eye on unbalanced parentheses. This is confusing for readers and translators alike, so I suggest that we encurage authors to avoid using smileys or anything else, that results in unbalanced paranteses.
 
*Sometimes a paragraph has an image or a snippet of code inserted with blank lines around the inserted item. In those cases the whole paragraph - blank lines and all - should be kept in one translation unit. The reason is, that in translating a paragraph, one does not allways translate sentence by sentence. Sometimes it is nessary to move things around a bit in order to make the text flow naturally.
 
*While I was translating the page on Kopete, the original was rearranged a bit. In particular, some sections were removed, and the remaining sections were renumbered. This had the unfortunate effect that some of the translated sections no longer matched the original ones. Even worse, the sections were marked as if they were current, so it is a bit a lucky stroke that I even noticed the problem. It seems, that we should not renumber sections after removing something or after inserting new sections. It should be OK to have translation units that are not consecutively numbered, right?
 
::In order to understand what happened consider this example:
 
::Let's say, that a page originally contains 10 translation units numbered 1 to 10. After I start translating the page, someone else modifies the original page as follows: some sections are removes - lets say units nr. 4 and 8. As I finish translating the (original) page and view the result, what I see are are translated units nr. 1 to 8 - in other words, the two sections removed from the original still appears in the translation while the last two sections are missing from the translation. --[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 18:03, 9 June 2010 (CEST)
 
: 2nd issue: Is it possible to just make them one section by removing the empty lines between?
: 3rd issue: Old numbers are not reused for new sections, unless someone changes the section markers by hand. The [http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Kopete&oldid=16451&diff=18180 latest changes] (which are not approved, which makes it so that the current translations are not outdated) seems to do something like that. I'd expect these kinds of problems go away once we figure out the best practices and changes pages less often. – [[User:Nikerabbit|Nikerabbit]] 20:28, 9 June 2010 (CEST)
 
Another issue for the  'best practices' - the offline tools have problems with combined bold and italic, so that should also be discouraged.  IMO the problem will be easily fixed when we get the new theme that makes links easier to see without using bold. --[[User:Annew|annew]] 21:54, 9 June 2010 (CEST)
 
Empty sections, prepared for information to be added later, are also a problem when it comes to docbook production.  They are fine in the early stages of building a page, but should be removed if they can't be filled before the page is marked for translation. --[[User:Annew|annew]] 12:28, 10 June 2010 (CEST)
 
There is a problem, that is bound to come up from time to time: Sometimes small changes are made to a page to correct spelling, grammar or formatting. Often, these changes do not affect the translations, but even so the corresponding section in the translated page will be marked as beeing out of date. Fx after I translated the page An Introduction to KDE it had a small edit, that was soon reverted to the original again. As a consequence, the Danish page is now marked out of date (no actual section is colored pink, though). I have tried to change the offending section, save the change and then change it back again but with no effect. This is unfortunate, as it will likely reduce readers confidence in the translations when they are marked as incompletely translated. Can we get rid of these markings? --[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 16:01, 10 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:I found a (the?) solution to this problem. The offending section is marked with a FUZZY tag - removing this from the translated section marks it as being up to date. Unfortunately, the FUZZY tag does not appear until the section is opened for editing, so when the section is not colored pink it may involve a bit of poking around to find it. --[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 17:45, 10 June 2010 (CEST)
 
::Well, not ''the'' solution, it appears. Sometimes the offending section is not marked as FUZZY. Instead, when you open the section for editing, you may see a pair of 'Previous content'/'New content' columns on a yellow background. Even if the translation doesn't need any updating, it seems that you need to make some change and then save it to get rid of the 'out of date' marking at the top of the page. --[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 18:09, 10 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:::If that turns out to be the only reasonable solution, we'll have to write into the guidelines that an extra space added is probably sufficient to achieve it.  Not ideal, but a workaround until a better solution is found. --[[User:Annew|annew]] 21:55, 10 June 2010 (CEST)
 
::::No need to change anything, just saving th message as-is will clear the status. If outdated sections are not marked with pink/fuzzy tag, it's a bug. I need clear steps to reproduce to investigate. Not being able to update page without marking translations outdated is a missing feature.
 
:::::The same problem appears on this page: [[An_introduction_to_KDE/de]] (and probably on several others). When I enter the translation page, no section is marked as FUZZY, and no section appears on a pink background. I did at one point try to just save the offending section of a similar page, but that didn't help. (Maybe I should have given the database a little time to update before I checked the page?)--[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 17:15, 11 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:::::: You can use [http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Special:LanguageStats&code=da&suppresscomplete=1 this] to find all pages with fuzzy tags, then open section , delete fuzzy tags .--[[User:Qiii2006|Qiii2006]] 19:36, 12 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:::::::Thanks, this is usefull! It doesn't solve the above problem, though, as the sections in question are not marked as fuzzy. I just checked - An_introduction_to_KDE/de doesn't appear on the German list, but the page is still marked as outdated (98% complete).
 
::::::::I find this problem in [[An_introduction_to_KDE/zh-cn|An_introduction_to_KDE/zh-cn]] and [[An_introduction_to_KDE/zh-tw|zh-tw]] too. I saved zh-cn page twice to make it 100% complete ([http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=An_introduction_to_KDE/zh-cn&action=historysubmit&diff=23137&oldid=23135 1],[http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=An_introduction_to_KDE/zh-cn&action=historysubmit&diff=23139&oldid=23137 2]), another zh-tw is still 98% complete. [http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=An_introduction_to_KDE/zh-cn&action=historysubmit&diff=23135&oldid=19189 Save section directly] without modify message is useless. This problem appears because fuzzybot [http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=An_introduction_to_KDE/zh-cn&action=historysubmit&diff=19069&oldid=17465 marked] page as outdated, but didn't mark any section with fuzzy tag --[[User:Qiii2006|Qiii2006]] 11:58, 13 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:::::By the way: Most (every?) time this problem has occured on one of the Danish pages, it has ben caused of two kinds of edits to the English original: Either a link of the form <nowiki>[[Page]]</nowiki> has been changed to <nowiki>[[Page|Page]]</nowiki> or unneeded space characters have been removed for a wiki-link. I hope a solution can be found, for these kinds of changes are quite valuable to translators.
 
Another problem just occured to me. All links to translated pages needs to be changed as they are transferred to the new framework! I think it is probably best to wait until a fair amount of pages have been transferred; otherwise we would have to constantly go over alle our pages to correct links to newly transferred pages. Could this problem be solved by a bot? If so, it would take a heavy load off our shoulders. --[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 19:43, 10 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:Yes, we are going to need a small army of helpers for this if we can't find any way of automating the checks.  We are aware of it, but haven't yet put in place any plan for dealing with it.  I've been rather taken aback by the speed of uptake, and it's now time to make sure that we include all the issues into the guidelines.  We'll be working on that over the next few days. --[[User:Annew|annew]] 21:55, 10 June 2010 (CEST)
 
== (Fixed) Translation sections in categories ==
I noticed translated categories pages list also translation sections containing category statements. For example (and to explain better :D) look [http://userbase.kde.org/Category:Per_iniziare_(it) this]. I think readers can be confused a bit.--[[User:Caig|Caig]] 11:51, 13 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:I see this too. I wonder if it is possible for the wiki to not list anything in the '''Translations''' namespace in normal categories. --[[User:Nilli|Nilli]] 13:45, 13 June 2010 (CEST)
 
::This is on the To-Do list - see http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Issues_and_features#Page_translation .  As usual, the bottleneck is man-power. --[[User:Annew|annew]] 13:31, 14 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:::Update - this is fixed, but needs manual intervention for the pages already (wrongly) listed.  Please open the page and re-save it.  The problem should disappear.  Isn't it wonderful to have such rapid response from the developer :-) --[[User:Annew|annew]] 14:23, 14 June 2010 (CEST)
 
::::Really wonderful! --[[User:Caig|Caig]] 15:18, 14 June 2010 (CEST)
 
::::Seems no manual intervention is needed anymore, as nobody has touched "my" pages but they don't show up in the categories. Pass a big thank you on to the developers! --[[User:Nilli|Nilli]] 21:50, 14 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:::::Yep, I found a maintenance script that fixed them. – [[User:Nikerabbit|Nikerabbit]] 21:53, 14 June 2010 (CEST)
 
==Images==
 
To avoid the ugly shortened line immediately after an image both writers and translators needs to take action. I have found this to work: In the original English page, we still need two blank lines following an image to avoid the problem. If the image is in a translation unit of its own, translators need to terminate their input with a newline character. --[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 10:18, 16 June 2010 (CEST)
 
== Preparing pages for translation ==
 
I see that already some pages are marked with ''This page contains changes which are not marked for translation''. Is there a process in place to prepare the pages to allow the translators to work on the added / changed text? The same question is also true for pages that are not currently prepared at all for translation. --[[User:Sordon|Sordon]] 13:51, 17 June 2010 (CEST)
 
: The first issue is that too many pages were prepared for translation at once.  More important even than that is that we had no documented guidelines for typographical issues, which caused a number of problems for the translators.  This week we have worked on writing such guidelines (and some new features will be added in a day or two) and fixing other issues.  The result is that we have had no time to prepare other pages.
 
: In fact I will not be preparing new pages for a while yet.  The first task is to go through those Group 1 and Group 2 pages that we selected as priority, and check them against Typographical_Guidelines.  As each page is checked then it will be re-marked, and that will be the final version, subject only to genuine updates.  If you have time to spare, please help check those pages, and either ping me on irc or email me to tell me when pages are finished.  Thanks. --[[User:Annew|annew]] 14:34, 17 June 2010 (CEST)
:: Hello Anne, ok fair enough. So I will take a closer look on these pages. One question, though. The page [[Quick Start]] is mentioned as an important page. But I can't find any other pages pointing to this page. Am I missing something? (Nevertheless the page is now translated to German) --[[User:Sordon|Sordon]] 15:06, 17 June 2010 (CEST)
:::No, you're not.  The intention is that the current Help link will be changed to point to that page.  The front page is also to be re-written to give a clearer indication that there are help pages for getting settled into UserBase - the Getting_Started category - and for contributing.  Maybe we will add a site notice (which displays on every page) pointing to Quick_Start as well.  If you are interested in discussing such things, you might like to drop in to #kde-www on Saturday mornings, the time we have allocated for discussing web site issues. --[[User:Annew|annew]] 08:58, 18 June 2010 (CEST)
::::Thanks for the detailed answer. Now it's all clear --[[User:Sordon|Sordon]] 10:32, 18 June 2010 (CEST)
 
== Translating pages ==
 
Translating a page from scratch I have come across a problem. When a page is worked on after beeing marked for translation, it is quite likely that a new section will be added between original sections, and the number of its translation units is going to be out of sequence. This means that the translation page will show units in a mixed-up sequence. For long pages in particular this can be a problem for translators, since it is often impossible to find the right translation of something, when you don't know the context. [[Parley/Manual]] is a good example of this problem.
 
Is it possible to make the translation system serve translation units in logical rather than in numerical order? --[[User:Claus chr|Claus chr]] 09:27, 20 June 2010 (CEST)
 
:I thought it already did. I will add it to the issue list at [http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Issues_and_features#Page_translation translatewiki.net]. – [[User:Nikerabbit|Nikerabbit]] 15:32, 20 June 2010 (CEST)

Latest revision as of 18:57, 30 September 2010

Note

If you find pages with any of the problems discussed here, please amend the English page. If you are not able to do that, leave a message for the admin team.