[xwiki-users] translation of the documentation (ie. in french)

[Vincent Massol]

Hi Brice and everyone,

My current thinking:

* English should always be the default

* XWiki.org web site has to be of good quality. Our old old.xwiki.org  
wasn't good enough and contained lots of half finished stuff. It  
wasn't "professional" enough and was giving a bad "reputation" to  
XWiki. As XWiki.org is the official web site for XWiki we need it to  
be of professional quality. This has to be re-conciliated with the  
fact that any registered user can edit/add documentation to it. Not  
an easy task but one I've dedicated myself to by checking daily what  
gets added,etc and steering the community. However I *know* I won't  
have the bandwidth for keep track of xwiki.org's content in several  
languages and keep the same quality in all languages.

* My initial thinking was: everything should be in English so that  
all efforts can be mutualized and efforts are not lost in  
divergences. I still believe this is the case because frankly seen  
the number of edits we have I don't think there are enough  
documentation contributors to allow several language translations to  
be done and to live on. Brice, you're comparing it to Wikipedia but  
do you know how many people are contributing daily there? :-) I wish  
we had that number...

* I think we should provide a space for users who want to translate  
XWiki documentation in different languages but I don't think these  
translations should be "endorsed" by the XWiki development team as we  
won't be able to guarantee the quality. I think they should be  
maintained by contributors only. As a consequence I think the best is  
to create a translation web site on the XWiki.com farm for people who  
are interested in translating the xwiki documentation (we could even  
possibly provide such a site on xwiki.org, as <language>.xwiki.org  
(and  xwiki.org/<language> would redirect to it using URL rewriting).  
We would need a big disclaimer on these sites saying that:
1) this is work done by contributors and not by the XWiki development  
team
2) that the official site is http://xwiki.org

* It's a pity we don't use the XWiki internationalization feature for  
this but I don't see how to reconcile the points above with it and  
I'd rather we not use this feature than risk disappointing users if  
they see incomplete or low level documentation in some language.

* To be honest I'm personally really skeptical that such translations  
will work. As the creator of Jakarta Cactus, I have experienced such  
kind of translations and it has never really worked. Translations are  
always months and even years behind the official translations, you  
get emails on the project mailing list asking for support because  
they're looking at an outdated documentation, and the solution is on  
the english documentation page.

<more thinking...>

* Hmm... I guess we could turn on internationalization for xwiki.org  
but:
   1) we would need to find a way to put the disclaimers I mentioned  
on *each* translated page as a header for example
   2) we would need one translation champion for each language. That  
person would be dedicating himself/herself to drive the contributions  
for that language, to organize them, guarantee a good quality level,  
remove wiki vandalism as they happen (this happens daily but to a  
small degree)

WDYT?

Before answering, please bear in mind that today I am doing 90% of  
the work for xwiki.org so it may sound easy but it's a lot of sweat  
and hard work and it doesn't happen automagically :-)

Thanks
-Vincent

On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:21 PM, lopensource-cestbien at yahoo.fr wrote:

> hello,
>  I m new user of XWiki, and i want to help the xwiki "community"  
> translating the documentation (ie. in french). I was starting doing  
> it on xwiki.com on the "Admin guide" some days before but without  
> any permission. So today, i asked you here how must we process ?
>
>  I got a mail from Vincent Massol and so, some questions are :
>  - how can't we be sure that the french version of the  
> documentation will be an updated version ?
>  - how prevent new information(s) on the french version that  
> wouldn't appear on the english one ?
>  - what will be the interact(s) between a french and an english  
> version ?
>
> This is my opinion, but of course we must discuss about this :
>  If we see the wikipedia contribution process, then there is one  
> wiki instance for each language. The only interact is an interlang  
> link between article(s).
>
> Differents versions could be, and (often) are different !
> I think we must do the same for xwiki documentation.
> Got a dirty version of the documentation is better than nothing!
>
> Vincent was talking to me about starting a french instance of xwiki  
> website. I think : maybe not, this is a good idea !
> For me, french and english community of xwiki can progress on 2  
> distinct ways without any problem. Sure, there will be some people  
> to make bridge..
>
> What are you thinking about this ? please give us your opinion.
>
> Best regards
>  Boly38
>
> NB: Vincent Massol, please correct me if i do some mistake :)
>
>
>
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