A matter for debate:
Jenia, a WordPress.com translator for ru_RU, has suggested an automatic way (instead of the manual-whenever-each-translator-remembers-to-do-it) to import .org strings to .com. The logic is pretty simple and in the same vein as the fact that WordPress.com uses the WordPress.org software (of which, for all purposes, translations are a part).
This has implications of several kinds, the least of which are technical (that’s the easy part), mostly related to ‘ownership’ (for lack of a better word) or at least ‘control’ of translations. From my point of view, it’s a question of how the flow would look like so as to be completely peaceful and transparent.
What is everyone’s opinion?
Kenan, and 3 others are discussing. 
Jenia 5:05 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
One thought that comes to mind is to publish dot-org translations under dot-com projects as “suggested” by e.g. “GlotPress” to highlight them as automatically imported and give the dot-com validators a chance to review and edit/approve them (suppose the dot-com validators find typos or inaccuracies? – now, wouldn’t it be nice to “bind” those strings so that if they are in the same place in the code, they are translated in the same way everywhere – but I might overcomplicating things here…).
Then, in case of non-existing or inactive validators for dot-com projects, translations would be auto-approved after a period of time (a week?) and be deployed.
In terms of ownership/control – from what I have seen, the structure is by design rather loose – who ever raises their hand, assumes ownership. A bit like with WordPress, however contributes most, both to the translations and the debate, ultimately shapes the decisions.
Zé 6:10 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
Erm… maybe, yes. I suggest we leave that bit under “future release”
I like the idea of auto-approving .org translations for those that don’t exist/have no validators on .com
Jenia 5:48 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
@Zé: could you clarify the point you brought up about translations being duplicated? E.g. if there is “Next” occurring once in the dot-org translation – would that be replicated whenever the string “Next” appears in the dot-com translation? And what if there are multiple instances of “Next” in the dot-org translation, will only the first (or the most recent, or whatever) be used?
I guess it would help me to see an example
In case of multiple matches, I would suggest checking for cases, context labels (I wish there were more!) and again, suggesting the auto-translations as “fuzzy” or “pending approval”.
Zé 6:07 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
Not that complicated
We harvest strings from .com code onto GP and if a string already exists it’s not duplicated. I.e. if we have a “Next” for Twenty Ten, we won’t have an extra “Next” for Duster. Must be an exact match, though.
Kenan 9:57 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
It would be nice to have this automated. I periodicaly upload bbPress and wp.org translations to the wp.com in Bosnian. W have no problems with the terminology (we have a web site for adopted terms). I believe that terminology in other languages that have different teams for .org and .com is pretty much the same (some minor differencies) but, to prevent any possible disagreements, maybe the imported translations should be marked as “waiting” and a notification sent to the validator to have them checked.
Jenia 6:35 am on April 13, 2011 Permalink |
@Kenan: would you mind sharing a link to the web site that you use to keep track of accepted terminology? We have a simple list for that in Russian, and I’d be interested to see what formats/processes other localization teams have adopted.
Zé 12:46 pm on April 13, 2011 Permalink |
Example from Brasil: http://wp-brasil.org/traducoes/glossario
Kenan 7:14 pm on April 13, 2011 Permalink |
Here you go: http://bosanskirjecnik.info/
Milan Dinić 10:03 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
As always, the best would be to leave options so that maintainers can choose it, eg. should strings be approved or not, who will be the owner, etc.
It’s impossible to satisfy everyones needs so having options simplifies things.
Jenia on original forum asked:
Since I’m validator on both .org and .com, those strings that are same (ie. in core) I immediately update for both projects and then I’m sure that translations are consistent.
Zé 10:09 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
Would something in the form of a switchable option work, in that case? À la “click this checkbox to have your strings automatically exported to WordPress.com” or similar.
Zé 10:09 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
Or vice-versa on the .com side, actually
Milan Dinić 10:17 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
Yes, but there should be defined rules what will happen when you check that option and those rules should be visible to users since there is no undo in GlotPress.
And I’m actually not sure where should we have this, since .com generally uses code from .org trunk which means strings on .com can be visible for long time even before string freeze.
Zé 10:27 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
+1 on the visibility of the rules, of course. My premise for this, as stated above was for the process “to be completely peaceful and transparent”. As to the where and how, it’s open to debate.
Jenia 6:37 am on April 13, 2011 Permalink |
@Milan: how do you update strings for both projects when they occur in both dot-com and dot-org versions? Manually in GlotPress, or uploading .po file to both GlotPress projects, or something else?
Milan Dinić 3:54 pm on April 15, 2011 Permalink |
Since I’m only validator at both places, I translate in Poedit so I open both files simultaneously and later do SVN commit / GlotPress import.
Wacław 3:44 pm on April 13, 2011 Permalink |
This is a really good idea. I guess that for cases where there are separate translation teams for .com and .org, a switch on .com would be nice, for the .com translators to decide whether they want this kind of thing (so that the .com team wouldn’t get annoyed at having their translations overridden.)
Sergey Biryukov 3:19 pm on April 14, 2011 Permalink |
It’s been a long time since we first synchronized ru_RU translations for .org and .com back in 2008. I wrote a plugin to compare .mo files
At the time (WordPress 2.6, I think), there were some terms which needed to be translated differently in WP and WPMU (Archive, Enabled, Latest, etc.) They have the right context labels after the merge, however we should probably make sure that any other terms with multiple meanings also have the right context labels.
Now that we have GlotPress, it’s a good idea to simplify the synchronization process.