General question about translation of documentation and organisation within Alfresco

Alfresco enables you to store translated versions of content against
the native language content item, so the relationship is always
maintained. It controls these translations with versioning and other
content services.

Setting it up seems relatively easy, and just becomes a matter of how
we want our directory structure. As it stands, the en-US versions are
located in Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/catalog/all our books.

Off the cuff, my thoughts are we can modify our structure as:
1) Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/en-US/all our books
or 2) Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/l10n/language-COUNTRY/books
where for the first choice all translations (inc. en-US) share
identical structures, and the second choice the translated versions are
grouped in a 'special' spot.

Thoughts?

I would be more than happy to setup a space-tree if someone could
provide a translation of the current space-tree spaces, and some
consensus were reached regarding the tree setup.

After that, it's a matter of exploring the translation features.

-- jdc

Hi Jeremy,

Alfresco enables you to store translated versions of content against
the native language content item, so the relationship is always
maintained. It controls these translations with versioning and other
content services.

That sounds pretty interesting from where I'm sitting, although it would
be interesting to see exactly how it deals with versioning of the
translation, I guess much in the same way as versioning for an original
document ?

Setting it up seems relatively easy, and just becomes a matter of how
we want our directory structure. As it stands, the en-US versions are
located in Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/catalog/all our books.

Off the cuff, my thoughts are we can modify our structure as:
1) Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/en-US/all our books
or 2) Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/l10n/language-COUNTRY/books
where for the first choice all translations (inc. en-US) share
identical structures, and the second choice the translated versions are
grouped in a 'special' spot.

Thoughts?

I suppose it all boils down to whether contributors are going to provide
original documentation in their own language which can then be
translated into a myriad other languages, or whether we agree that en_US
is the reference language and any other language contributions can only
be translations thereof. The second option is, IMHO, more restrictive in
that it excludes, as I understand it, any possibility for original
contributions in a language other than EN. From this point of view, and
based on the fact that a lot of original documentation in the previous
OOo project actually came from non-English speaking projects (including
myself, having written both in English and French), it might be
preferable to have a l10n structure, but as I said, that is just my
personal opinion.

I would be more than happy to setup a space-tree if someone could
provide a translation of the current space-tree spaces, and some
consensus were reached regarding the tree setup.

Sure, I can provide you with translations into French no problem, in
German as well I guess, unless someone else here volunteers (a native
German speaker for example ?)

Alex

Hi

Alexander Thurgood schrieb:

That sounds pretty interesting from where I'm sitting, although it would
be interesting to see exactly how it deals with versioning of the
translation, I guess much in the same way as versioning for an original
document ?

+1

  

Off the cuff, my thoughts are we can modify our structure as:
1) Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/en-US/all our books
or 2) Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/l10n/language-COUNTRY/books
where for the first choice all translations (inc. en-US) share
identical structures, and the second choice the translated versions are
grouped in a 'special' spot.

Thoughts?
    

the second structure seems me to be better.

I suppose it all boils down to whether contributors are going to provide
original documentation in their own language which can then be
translated into a myriad other languages,

+1

or whether we agree that en_US
is the reference language and any other language contributions can only
be translations thereof.

---1

The second option is, IMHO, more restrictive in
that it excludes, as I understand it, any possibility for original
contributions in a language other than EN. From this point of view, and
based on the fact that a lot of original documentation in the previous
OOo project actually came from non-English speaking projects (including
myself, having written both in English and French), it might be
preferable to have a l10n structure, but as I said, that is just my
personal opinion.

+1

I would be more than happy to setup a space-tree if someone could
provide a translation of the current space-tree spaces, and some
consensus were reached regarding the tree setup.
    

I could provide German translation.

Karl-Heinz

Hi :slight_smile:

I don't quite understand why en-US has a simpler address whereas other languages
have

l10n/language-COUNTRY

Would it be technically difficult or confusing to have languages use the same
style as en-US? eg

Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/en-GB/books
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/en-AUS/books
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/sp-BR/books

Ok, you can see i don't know the appropriate abbreviations for other languages
but i think the idea of avoiding the extra folder "l10n" is pretty clear?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:

I think these translations are going to need to be done by more than 1 person!

Perhaps IF people do happen to choose the same page as someone else then some
sort of quick comparison to get the best ideas off both (or more) versions. I
am certain there are some great tools to help with collaboration and team work
for translators! I just had a quick look in my package manager and found LOTS.

I thought there were already teams in place already working with good tools.
Perhaps there is a separate mailing list that people have missed?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom,

I think these translations are going to need to be done by more than 1 person!

Yes, more than likely, especially for big documents with many chapters.

I thought there were already teams in place already working with good tools.
Perhaps there is a separate mailing list that people have missed?

Well I don't want us to get confused between the built-in help system
and providing user documentation. As far as I'm concerned, I am talking
about user documentation guides, books, manual, tutorials, etc, pretty
much like what is actually happening here already.

As far as the teams and tools in place are concerned, yes there is a
l10n team, but this is currently more focussed to the online help
content and translating the interface and menus of the applications (as
well as extensions, for example). In addition, the tooling currently
provided or suggested either does not work particularly well with ODF
documents, or is not multiplatform. I don't want to use a tool if it
messes up my output document, e.g. in the styles or formatting, and a
given tool that works on Linux is absolutely no use to me if it doesn't
work on Mac (my platform of preference at the moment). The mention of
l10n is in my understanding a place where all may come and contribute if
they want, and by doing so they can use the Alfresco framework to manage
the storage and versioning of their work. It is not a translation
framework per se (unless there are some hidden functionalities I am
unaware of).

Alex

Ahah, thanks :slight_smile: That makes sense now :slight_smile:

So, it sounds as though the translations mailing lists need to know about the
Alfresco developments because there is likely to be considerable overlap with
work they have already done. Perhaps some of their translations might help
people do well with Alfresco?

I think informing translators might get a lot more work done than simply doing
the work! It seems we need "Liason Officers" or something?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

It would appear the issues we are entertaining have spawned an entire
confederation to address them in other implementations:
http://native-lang.openoffice.org/

Perhaps I'm making too much of it, but my thoughts are it might be a
good time to ask the SC to step in and ensure we handle this correctly?

-- jdc

Perhaps I am. To avoid being the gatekeeper here, I propose to change
the current `Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/catalog/`
space structure to `Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/en/`

Then creating:
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/it/
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/fr/
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/de/
... and so on as needed.

I will make these changes unless I hear otherwise.

-- jdc

Perhaps I am. To avoid being the gatekeeper here, I propose to change
the current `Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/catalog/`
space structure to `Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/en/`

Then creating:
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/it/
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/fr/
Company Home/LibreOffice Documentation/de/
... and so on as needed.

I will make these changes unless I hear otherwise.

-- jdc

Hi, :slight_smile:

So, it sounds as though the translations mailing lists need to know about the
Alfresco developments because there is likely to be considerable overlap with
work they have already done.

I had planned to do announce the existence of Alfresco to l10n people
once the site rolls over to it's new alfresco.libreoffice.org name
(Florian will *try* to have time for that this coming week, he says).

But, if fact, some of them already seem to be aware of it... It looks
like we'll have more work that could be done on developing workflows
catering to l10n - once we figure out what their exact needs are
(perhaps already at least partially covered by what Jeremy's been
doing?)

In any case, I'll be running to catch up with things this week, when
I've finished with my current job for a client.

Jeremy, Samphan, thanks for all the work you've been doing.

David Nelson

Lol, another "already done or being done" and another "waiting for Florian".
Both the usual results in 1 ! Hopefully he is not working at this while driving
across Germany! The people in TDF & LibreOffice are great :slight_smile:

Regards from
Tom )

Looks great :slight_smile: All languages clearly being equal. But surely some languages
have sub-divisions? Such as en-gb, en-aus, en-us and so on?

Also is
LibreOffice Documentation
or
LibreOffice/Documentation
Although either way is good.

Anyway getting rid of that extra folder in the middle to make all languages
equal is definitely a good move and i think that was the important part of your
message. :slight_smile:

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

My 2cents as a pt-br translator is that we let the subdivisions as they are,
so if we get a team that posts as PT and ANOTHER as PT-BR we let them both
exist in the main tree

something like:

/pt
/pt-br

?

Rogerio

My opinion as well.

+1 here too