Re: RFC: disconnect from the Translation Project

[Jean Abou Samra]

On 7/6/22 11:15, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > 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.
> Hmm.  Jonas regularly updates LilyPond's `.pot` and `.po` files.
> Maybe sending them to that robot can be integrated into the release
> scripts?


They're not sent to a robot but to a human.



> > 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.
> I think this would be a bad idea.  There are language-specific TP
> teams who provide their knowledge in handling `.po` files – something
> we don't have.  For example, there exists a LilyPond `.po` file for
> Vietnamese!  If we no longer use the infrastructure of TP, we lose the
> contact to these teams.


I think you raise a good point that we need to keep contact with
existing translators. If we implement the decision I suggest,
I'll send an email to all of them (this is 15 people, but most of
them are inactive) to point them to the new process.

On the other hand, I think that "provide [knowledge] we don't have"
is wishful thinking. I understand the original idea of the TP, it's
nifty in theory, and I wish it worked well for us, but I don't see
that it does. On your example: yes, there is a Vietnamese po file.
It was last updated in 2013, with a few copyright year updates.
The previous update of this file is from 2009.

Let's take a look at

git shortlog Documentation/ :^Documentation/en --since="Jul 29, 2020"

vs.

git shortlog po/ :^po/lilypond.pot --since="Jul 29, 2020"


(I chose July 29, 2020 as the date because of the restructuring that
moved English files into Documentation/en/.)

The former tells me that the following languages have seen documentation
updates since that date:

- Chinese
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Spanish
- French
- Japanese
- Catalan

The latter shows which languages saw updates of po files:

- Esperanto
- French
- Japanese
- Dutch
- Catalan
- Swedish

As you can see, the lists are about similar in length. Documentation
actually wins, and yet we're not currently actively recruiting volunteers
or organizing translation in teams in any way. Documentation also has
quite a steeper entry barrier for editing. In other words: we'd get
the same number of PO translators or more by moving away from the TP.


I know of at least two people who tried getting involved in translating
LilyPond but stopped because the setup and contributing processes
were too complicated. If you want to start translating LilyPond today,
you have to learn two completely different sets of processes, one with
Git and GitLab, and one with the TP robot. I frequently call on people
to contribute to LilyPond. I never called on people to help translating
LilyPond, since I would just be embarrassed if someone actually replied
because I can't say "you'll see, it's actually very easy" in good
faith. I think there is a lot of long-term value in simplifying contributing
processes.


> My conclusion: We should rather take care of sending files to the TP
> robot regularly than dumping the whole process.


That means work. Who is 'we'? Do you volunteer?


Best,
Jean