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@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 :)
>>
>>
>>