RFC: disconnect from the Translation Project

[Jean Abou Samra]

Hi,

Yesterday, I found myself wanting to correct a trivial markup error in
the output of `lilypond --help`.  To do that fix, I first have to
register as a member of the translation team for French on the
Translation Project, by contacting the team coordinator, and learn how
to use the Translation Project Robot.  This page doesn't sound very
encouraging:

https://translationproject.org/html/translators.html

  Learning to use the robot

  While you are waiting for your disclaimer to be processed, you can
  already submit PO files to the robot, to practice. The robot may not
  accept the PO file, but it will probably discover some errors and
  tell you about them. People translating for the first time usually
  make various small mistakes and it may require a few tries before
  you get everything right, especially since the robot is very fussy
  about the contents of the header fields. Don't be discouraged, the
  robot is very patient. :-) Exactly how to deal with the robot is
  explained on translationproject.org/html/robot.html .

The last update to translations in po/ was
00718f025f95b95c57e2eab653d7ccc299129377 in March 2021.  Since then,
Documentation/ has seen updates with 4 different translators in total,
in Hugarian (3453e7f3c61c0fe9aa251829c52225ae5fd452ff and others by
Dénes Harmath), Chinese (67a7a649d079f04222af989ba41cf9f3740646ab by
Chengrui Li and 070ea5208663d17122bed24676a675e324304a8b by
Guyutongxue), and French (numerous commits by Jean-Charles
Malahieude), while the entry barrier for editing our complex Texinfo
markup is much higher. I think this shows that the idea of the Translation
Project as a hub for teams to work on several projects at the same
time, making for more committed translators per project, is not
working for us.

It's awkward to have po files in the TP but not the documentation, as
that just doubles the amount of contributing processes that a new
translator has to learn.

The PO template that is the basis for PO files needs to be updated at
every release by notifying the coordinator of the release.  That's a
maintenance cost.  Right now, we're not paying it, and the result is
that the PO template any translators would base their work on is from
LilyPond 2.21.7, a year and a half ago.

In short: lots of fuss for not much reward, I think.  I therefore
propose that we simply disconnect from the TP and use our usual GitLab
process to accept contributions to po/*.po.

Thoughts?

Best,
Jean