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

[Vincent Massol]

Brice,

I forgot to say thanks for bringing this up and many thanks for  
wanting to contribute documentation (this is not often that it  
happens and it's great you're stepping up! :)).

This is a topic we've mentioned several times in the past but we've  
never really tackled it so this is a good opportunity to discuss it  
all together.

Once more I don't want my previous email to be viewed negatively. I'd  
also really like to have XWiki doc be translated into lots of  
languages. I'm just warning about the side effects... :)

Thanks again
-Vincent

On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:58 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:

> 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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