[Anubad] A summary of the Translation Sprint

[Sayak Sarkar]

On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 10:36 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <
sankarshan.mukhopadhyay at gmail.com> wrote:

> <sniped>
>
> Sprints are effective for specific objects. For example, if we'd like
> to complete a few remaining applications (eg. Shotwell and so forth)
> that are part of a GNOME release or, something similar in LibO.o
> Larger projects like GNOME, KDE etc require a constant translation
> effort and, across multiple releases. Sprints may not be the best way
> to do it unless we adopt a form of agile translation where all
> contributors do sprints.
>

True. Somehow I do feel that such an agile translation method has a lot of
potential.

>
> > Would be nice to see what kind of outcome this can yield. If things go
> well
> > we can expect an increase in the translation stats as well as better
> > quality of translations because of the increased community interactions.
>
> I am a bit less concerned about translation statistics ie. the win by
> numbers when compared with translation quality and consistency. If we
> can get familiar and comfortable with sprints, we can possibly look at
> ways of how to increase the number of participants and, also keep a
> high number of folks doing translations.
>
> I completely agree. The thing about these sprints that appealed to me the
most is something that I noticed while doing some of the translations that
day.

Often while doing translations we face two main challenges:-

   1. Finding the most appropriate term for a particular word, which may
   have a particular meaning, and
   2. Trying to maintain consistency of word usage. It should not happen
   that we use one term for a word somewhere, and another somewhere else.

The advantage of sprints is especially evident not only in case of
beginners, but also experienced localizers, in that all of these people are
working at the same place (IRC) at the same time. Thus if they have any
doubts regarding something, they can clear those out then and there and
continue with the translations. This is where the translation quality goes
up in respect of both the above mentioned points.

The second biggest advantage is that the learning phase of beginners is
accelerated, again because of the time synchronization - everyone is
present  at the same place, at the same time. An obvious claim against this
might be that the IRC channels are always open and anybody with a doubt can
get it clarified in their, but the problem with this that beginners are
usually too shy or fearful of asking things as they think that they might
ask something that might be frowned upon. Plus, another added advantage is
that newcomers become more familiar with IRC environments.

My points might look like a bit too much beginner oriented, but the fact is
I myself am still getting started. :-)


> But all of that is far too forward looking. Let's just focus on
> completing the Gaia bits and then move on to other things.
>
> True. We should focus on completing the Gaia translations for now, but at
the same time, it would be good if we could use the Gaia sprints as a base
to experiment upon.

Regards,
Sayak

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