Re: Coordinating package meta-data translation

[Benno Schulenberg]

Hello Ludovic,

On 2014-06-06 23:00, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> The GNU distribution provided by Guix contains package synopses 
> and descriptions that we would like to translate (see [0] to get 
> an idea.)

When I first looked at the POT file of guix, about a year ago, I
found it odd that it contained descriptions of some of the packages
that it could install.  To me those descriptions would seem not to
be part of the tool, but part of the things that the tool works on.
So I would have expected them to be in a different POT file, or in
some package database, but not in the POT file of guix.

> For GNU packages, synopses and descriptions are kept in sync with 
> files from the GNU womb, which are in turn used to generate a web 
> page [1]. Translation of this web page is already handled by the 
> www.gnu.org translators.

So these blurbs (package descriptions) are already being translated
into different languages?  Well, then it is clear: remove those
blurbs from the guix POT file, and, if you need them in guix, import
them from the web-translating effort.  If you wish instead the blurbs
to be translated at the TP, then make them into a separate POT file,
say guix-blurbs, not a part of the main guix POT file.  Any existing
translations I can import into the TP.

> Thus, some synchronization would be needed between the TP and the 
> www translators.
> 
> Any idea/preference on how to proceed?

As will be clear from the above, I would not want to synchronize but
draw a strict dividing line: decide who should translate what, and
use those translations everywhere where the strings occur.

> (Note that the distro also contains synopses and descriptions for
>  non-GNU packages, which are *not* translated elsewhere.)

Ehm... which distro do you mean?  Or did you mean to say "any distro"
or "most distros"?

Regards,

Benno