[xliff-tools] PO Representation Guide: The PO Header

[Josep Condal]

Hi All, 

Regarding the following fragment:

----
> You also included a flag inside the source (the line that states that 
> the entry is a fuzzy one) and that should be considered as the value 
> of the "approved" attribute of the <trans-unit>. If the message is set

> to fuzzy, then the <trans-unit> element should have the "approved"
> attribute set to "no". If the fuzzy flag is not present, then the 
> message should be considered translated.

Yep. For indicating 'fuzzy', should we use the 'state' attribute of the
<target> element set to 'needs-review-translation', or the 'approved' 
attribute of the <trans-unit> element set to 'no'? Also, if we use the
'approved' attribute, should this be set to 'yes' for non-fuzzy
messages?

If we use the 'state' attribute, it would also be possible to set this
to 'new' for messages with fuzzy and blank msgstr, indicating a new
trans-unit, esp. useful when merging POT's and translated PO's.  
----

My opinion is that the correct flags for a fuzzy match should be the
following:

State = needs-translation

State-qualifier = fuzzy-match

The reason for proposing these values is that if we know something about
a fuzzy match is that it is not a translation of the source.  In a TEP
(Translation, Editing, and Proofreading) process, my opinion is that we
cannot promote segments too early, and they can only be flagged as "to
review" only when we know that they have been at least translated either
by a machine or by a human being.

Also in this line, I think that at generation time the approve flag
should be set to "no" (pessimistic approach), as their actual state of
approval depends on the context of the specific translation project.
Different projects agaisnt may have different requirements or different
aproaches to the risk<->budget/deadline trade-offs that must be made
(that is, it does not depend on the actual translation memory or files,
but on adhoc risk, quality and time-to-market restrictions). One
possible approach is that a filter's default behaviour could be to
target minimum risk.

Regards,

Josep.
Josep Condal
Managing Director
ApSIC S.L.
---
Caballero, 76 4-3
08029 Barcelona
Spain

T: +34 93 405 11 00
F: +34 93 430 81 77
@: pcondal at apsic.com
---