Dasher translations

In Ubuntu translation from Rosetta the only translation imported are for those packages in the "main" repository.

Dasher is in universe.

I know it is a big problem and that there are some other official GNOME packages without translations in rosetta.

Can rosetta add an exception and import the official GNOME packages?

Adi,

This should be a good option for us.

It's not a problem for Launchpad to import all the universe translations either, and make them available. However, the problem is with how are they going to get used in Ubuntu. Atm, Ubuntu is not providing any packaging for universe translation updates, so we've decided not to allow translating them, because those translations would not be shipped anywhere (i.e. they would be imported into Launchpad, translated there, but never exported anywhere).

There used to be a process of manual packaging of translations for universe packages, so if you are interested in helping there, get involved with MOTU, and we'll import whatever packages there's someone interested in maintaining them.

I don't think importing all universe translation is a good ideea.

We need to focus on quality and usefulness of our translation work. Many non-gui applications or development tools are not frequently used by people who don't know english.

Rather we should work with MOTUs for selective importing the translation into Launchpad and maybe we can create some exceptions for langpack generator script to include a couple of packages from universe.

Danilo, do you think this is feasible?

Many thanks!

My question for Henrique is whether he was suggesting translating dasher in Ubuntu, or upstream dasher. We could definitely try getting upstream dasher here!

Christian, upstreaming dasher here should be great.
The Portuguese (Brasil) translation is 100% and we could easily import the strings, I guess.

Henrique, do you have a good contact for dasher upstream? If you can get their approval to run their translations through Rosetta, it's a matter of getting started on that. Read more here: https://help.launchpad.net/TranslationsImportPolicy

Yes, I do Christian.
I'll contact the official pt_BR mantainer and ask him if we can do this here.
Thanks for the link, I'll read it carefully before doing the process.

Henrique: when it comes to doing the translation in Launchpad, remember to talk to the authors as well. We don't want situations where authors are surprised ("wait, what, our product is registered and being translated in Launchpad, under someone else's name?")—and we also don't want people to start registering separate "XX translation of YY" projects for any language XX or project YY.

If the authors do agree to translation in Launchpad, I'd suggest opening a new question here to ask us to create a new translation group, and set translation permissions for the project to Restricted. That way, anyone can help translate; translation group members get to review and control the end product; and languages that you aren't using Launchpad for do not have editable translation pages at all. That last point is so that people are not accidentally invited to contribute to translations that nobody will ever use.

OK, Jeroen. Thanks for the guidance.

Actually, getting upstream Dasher here is a bit more complex for not strictly technical issues. They would have to move off GNOME servers, since GNOME Translation Project manages all the translations for software on GNOME servers (it's the policy in GNOME). Alternative is to use very restrictive privileges with the understanding that people will have to manually submit PO files to the upstream project, and assign translations to a GNOME Translation group in Launchpad (where only official upstream teams are assigned).

Maybe a simple solution is to push Dasher intro main repository,

I am not very familiar with MOTU business and I don't know how practical is this solution. But it look simple (this does not imply it is easy to implement).

I disagree strongly with Danilo's position. If the Dasher upstream team is interested in using Launchpad Translations, even for specific languages, then are absolutely in the business of encouraging them and finding out what to do to support them.

I still maintain that the right approach is for Henrique to contact them and find out whether there is interest in pursing this further.

The matter of universe versus main is beyond Launchpad's direct control, and should be brought up before the Ubuntu TB, but I point out that translations aren't a very strong reason to make that change.

Christian: this is not my position. This is the position of GNOME and GTP (as an "official" GTP spokesperson, I know what I am saying). The reasons are many, but it's all easily summed up by: avoid complexities and conflicts between two different sources of work.

What I am describing above as a possible solution is to import entire GNOME into Launchpad (no any particular reason to restrict that only to Dasher) and assign it to https://translations.launchpad.net/+groups/gnome-translation-project (where I make sure only actual upstream teams get approved).

This means that we already have a few GNOME modules (check the translation group page, it lists eg. Glade-3, Banshee) imported and translatable, but we probably have quite a few problems there:
 1. Templates have to be kept manually up-to-date (I've long ago discussed fetching them directly off l10n.gnome.org with Carlos, and that might be the right approach for quicker results: otherwise we'd have to replicate some of the functionality from damned-lies in Launchpad), and I am pretty sure most of the modules we do allow right now have outdated POT files in there, or would have very soon (eg. none of the modules actually have any template in there, with only Glade-3 having an obsolete one at https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/glade-3/trunk/+pots/glade3: we've asked for people to dedicate themselves to updating PO templates before we allow translations in such cases, and even when someone said they'll do it, it never happened)
 2. Translators have to understand that it's their responsibility to submit translations upstream; in general, this means using Launchpad as a collaboration translation editor, which is a good reason enough imho (I wanted to do that for Serbian translations, but the problem is with 1)
 3. Translation team has to coordinate themselves with the upstream translation team: that's why I accept only for the upstream coordinator to be assigned a language in our GNOME translation group.

If we still want only Dasher, we'd have to have someone dedicate to updating POT files manually, but I doubt that will ever work properly, and until we have automatic imports, I'd rather not have any GNOME modules in.