[Libreoffice-qa] Moztrap, some questions

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 02:35:49PM +0200, Petr Mladek wrote:
> On one side, I like the idea of automatic translations. Though, I am
> afraid that we will need real localizations support in Moztrap anyway
> because:
> 
> 	+ better translations quality; tests need to be understandable
>           even for beginners
> 	+ language dependent tests; they can't be translated directly
> 	+ support more languages; Google is powerful but the translator
>           supports less localizations than LO; also I am not sure of the
>           quality of each language; I guess that some languages are
>           easier to translate automatically than others
> 
> BTW: I think that there will be similar problems with automatic
> translations and real translations. You will need to modify UI and touch
> similar piece of code for both of them.
> 
> I would prefer to spend resources on real localization than on the
> automatic translation.
> 
> Note that we have many active translators. We currently do not have
> enough hackers that would allow them to translate Moztrap.

Still the timing is critical here -- blocking on translations in the
beta-frenzy is not an option and the time windos is rather tight. What could
be done though is doing both: Using manual translation and priming it with an
automatic translation that than can be improved upon by an manual one. However
even then there are lots of issues with translations: The (english) source text
might change (because of an UI cleanup), making the localized version needing
an update (or at least an 'this is outdated' marker). That was one of the
reasons, why I like and suggested automatic translation as it changes with the
source text.
Doing manual translations, you will need the source and the translations text
to be under some form of version control. Possible, but a lot of work.

Best,

Bjoern