Re: Sync for dpkg

On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 08:04:07PM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> [Scott James Remnant]
> > There's a couple of things I'd like to investigate for the 1.13 branch:
> > 
> > 1) Notification of out-dated strings.  Would this help translators,
> >    especially for continual translation (rather than calling before an
> >    upload)?  We could use a system like Rosetta, or similar -- or just
> >    home-brewed notification on dpkg.org.
> > 
> >    I don't know what translators want, or how they like to work, you're
> >    better positioned to answer this than me.
> 
> Given the number of translators involved in dpkg translations, I bet
> that you can get as many answers as translators..:-)

And even people who do not actually translate it dare giving their
opinion ;)
There is nothing more discouraging for a translator than having their
translation sleep in the BTS for months without any reaction.  So if
you continue fixing l10n bugs by regular uploads, this is IMO the
best help you can provide.

Some minor points though:
  * Some messages are cryptic and have been reported to the BTS.  This
    is a pain for translators who have to read the source code to try
    to understand what is meant.  The sooner such bad wordings are
    rephrased, the better. (e.g. #9085, #99170)
  * Strings for all programs are concatenated in the same PO file.
    Translators usually prefer translating most used programs (like
    dpkg) first.  You certainly already addressed this issue in your
    development branch.
  * Many msgids should be rewritten as complete sequences; e.g.
     msgid " conflicts with "
    or
     msgid "Debian `"
     msgid "' package management program query tool\n"
    should be avoided.
  * Having plural forms would be nice for some languages, for e.g.
     msgid " %d packages, from the following sections:"
  * Dpkg is being translated via Rosetta, how are you going to merge
    translations?

Denis