[Qgis-community-team] Transifex and old translations

[Richard Duivenvoorde]

On 22-11-13 11:12, Alexander Bruy wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I just found very annoying issue that (I suspect) caused by Transifex.
> After downloading .po files from Transifex (no matter via web interface or
> using tx client) all old translations are empty.
> 
> So if I translated some text and then later original text and .po file will
> updated, my previous translation doesn't keep. E.g. initially we have text
> 
> "When starting QGIS for the first time not all core plugins are loaded."
> 
> and I translated it and pushed this translation to Transifex. After this text
> updated to
> 
> "When starting |qg| for the first time not all core plugins are loaded."
> 
> and all translations also updated. When I download updated file I can
> see previous version of this string but with empty translation. And as result
> I should translate this string again from scratch.
> 
> Is it me or this issue really exists? If this is not my fault, than I
> think this is
> a big issue and we should try to find solution or allow translators to use
> other workflows that preserve old strings.

Hi Alex,

If I understand you correct, you found out that: when an English text
(==key) changed, you do not have the translation of the original/old
text anymore.
While when you work with linguist, the ts file (not sure if this is also
working for po files), is keeping these old translation strings in
(file-) memory for a while...

BUT I do not think you really loose valid translated strings?

Am I right in this? (because your quote: "...After downloading .po files
from Transifex (no matter via web interface using tx client) all old
translations are empty..." could also be read that transifex is just
loosing strings....


But to answer your question: I do NOT agree with you:

1) the idea of using Transifex is to have a lot of eyeballs/hands around
which can "just start translating". So while you, as an individual,
encounter/feel above as a problem, my idea is that just by having more
translators around, this is less of a problem, because somebody else
will 'just translate this string as it was a new one'...

2) transifex (the web interface) itself is holding a 'history' for you,
and is also sharing strings between the different QGIS translation
projects. So indeed if you use the web interface, I think you will not
suffer so much from the problem you have.


So: I currently cannot make your problem go away, but I propose the
following:
- maybe I can create a link in each web page to make it even easier for
translators to immediately hop to that page in Transifex
- we can ask Transifex to provide the functionality: 'put old strings in
memory for a while'

For me the translation process via a web interface proves to be attract
much more translators then translating via the .po/.ts files.

Both Transifex and the old file based translations have advantages and
disadvantages. While I hope the disadvantages of Transifex do not make
it too frustrating, I think we should keep our current plan (at least
for a while).

I agree with you that (as an individual) it is frustrating to loose a
full sentence when only one word changes. But for QGIS as a project I
think a web-based solution is the best way.

Keep on translating please :-)

Regards,

Richard Duivenvoorde