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

Fri Mar 9 08:38:56 CET 2007

On Mar 9, 2007, at 7:01 AM, Sergiu Dumitriu wrote:

> The warning can be placed in the template, so it will always be  
> visible.
>
> Anyway, I think that placing the documentation in another place is  
> not good. It is hard to track changes on the main site and do the  
> same thing on 3-4 different sites, when the pages are not linked.  
> Having all the translations in one place is good. What we can do,  
> is to make a velocity script to display pages with no <lang>  
> version, pages where the <lang> version is more than 2 weeks older  
> than the english version, etc.
>
> A drawback is the fact that objects aren't translatable. This means  
> that comments are per page, not per translation, and this will  
> possibly create a mixture of comments in "all the languages of the  
> word" (hopefully).

Yes and that's already a pain in the FAQ zone.

-Vincent

>
> Sergiu.
>
> On 3/9/07, lopensource-cestbien at yahoo.fr < lopensource- 
> cestbien at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> yep,
>  Sure i dont see the daily number of contributions, maybe u're  
> right ;)
>  The only fact wich is difficult for me to understand is that there  
> is only one english version even if there is some users that ask  
> for french documentation..maybe they would like to contribute,  
> maybe not..but where can they contribute ?
>
> You say about professionnal way, professionnal team and quality.   
> Trying one french instance experimentation is a good way :  i think  
> authors must be called "french XWiki community" instead of  
> "Official XWiki team".. Poor number of contribution on this  
> instance will only say that there is not enough french users in the  
> french XWiki community who would like to contribute on XWiki french  
> website, and not that the XWiki or XWiki team aren't anough qualified.
>
>  When you are saying about your experiment, i understand that the  
> french version will be outdated, and i agree. You say about Jakarta  
> Cactus outdated documentation that create a lot of feedbacks. I  
> think a french user that discover XWiki website and don't speak  
> english will create same number(even more!?) of feedback : FAQ /  
> comments or simply don't come on this website...
>
> About the work needed to administrate this french instance, i  
> completely agree. This is a critical point... I understand that  
> this could be a main reason to avoid creating french version (for  
> now ! :)).  So maybe the official team could create  the french  
> instance with a warning "this website isn't official and is updated  
> by users temself, please go to the official website for an updated  
> content" or something like this (sorry for my poor english ;p)
>
> any way, thanks for your feedback Vincent.
> Boly38
>
> ----- Message transféré ----
> De : Vincent Massol < vincent at massol.net>
> À : xwiki-users at objectweb.org
> Envoyé le : Vendredi, 9 Mars 2007, 0h01mn 34s
> Objet : Re: [xwiki-users] translation of the documentation (ie. in  
> french)
>
>
> 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 :)
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
>
> -- 
> http://purl.org/net/sergiu
>
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