Exploring: Indian languages on Pootle

[Dwayne Bailey]

Hi Everyone,

Ankit suggested I post this ideas to this list. My name is Dwayne, I'm
sure I've met a few of you at Mozilla related events.

In Africa we have been using Pootle to translate Firefox into a number
of African languages - 18 at the moment. But we also have a number of
other non-African languages: Scots Gaelic, Urdu and Yakut.

I wanted to raise this as a proposal. To host the languages that you
are working on on the Pootle infrastructure. At the moment we are doing
more than just hosting, we're processing files into Mercurial, running
checks and leading people who aren't familiar with Mozilla bugzilla and
other tools.

What do you think is this something that could work for Indian languages?

--
regards
Dwayne

[Ankitkumar Rameshchandra Patel]

Hi Dwayne,

As I mentioned in my earlier reply as well, the requirement for each
Indic language would differ. So, you might not want to consider this as
a global solution for all Indic languages, but you can go by each
individual Indic language, provided you get confirmation from Mozilla
Indic l10n co-ordinators.

In order to decide whether we should use Pootle for Gujarati Mozilla
localization or not and since I co-ordinate Gujarati Localization
activities for Mozilla and various other projects, I would like to know
the accuracy of conversion from Moz to PO formats, while translations
are being hosted on a Pootle solutions. Also would like to know the
process from translating Mozilla files on Pootle to conversion into Moz
and submission to upstream Mozilla hg repos. It would clarify many
things that I and many of us wanted to understand.

Btw, Mozilla India Community Team is also suggesting us to host
translation stuff on their Narro instances. So, it would be greater
opportunity for us to evaluate tools and decide what could be better for
each individual Indic team's needs.

Thanks!
--
Regards,
Ankit Patel
http://www.ankit644.com/

[Dwayne Bailey]

On 2011-12-13 06:57, Ankitkumar Rameshchandra Patel wrote:
>
> On 12/12/2011 08:12 PM, Dwayne Bailey wrote:
>>
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> Ankit suggested I post this ideas to this list. My name is Dwayne,
>> I'm sure I've met a few of you at Mozilla related events.
>>
>> In Africa we have been using Pootle to translate Firefox into a
>> number of African languages - 18 at the moment. But we also have a
>> number of other non-African languages: Scots Gaelic, Urdu and Yakut.
>>
>> I wanted to raise this as a proposal. To host the languages that you
>> are working on on the Pootle infrastructure. At the moment we are
>> doing more than just hosting, we're processing files into Mercurial,
>> running checks and leading people who aren't familiar with Mozilla
>> bugzilla and other tools.
>>
>> What do you think is this something that could work for Indian
>> languages?
>>
>
> Hi Dwayne,
>
> As I mentioned in my earlier reply as well, the requirement for each
> Indic language would differ. So, you might not want to consider this as
> a global solution for all Indic languages, but you can go by each
> individual Indic language, provided you get confirmation from Mozilla
> Indic l10n co-ordinators.

Agreed. We don't do anything without buyin from a team so it really is
the choice of each team.

>
> In order to decide whether we should use Pootle for Gujarati Mozilla
> localization or not and since I co-ordinate Gujarati Localization
> activities for Mozilla and various other projects, I would like to know
> the accuracy of conversion from Moz to PO formats, while translations
> are being hosted on a Pootle solutions.

You can think of Pootle and PO as two different things.

PO:
Conversion accuracy is 100%. We fix any bugs that appear when needed.
But we haven't had to fix anything in quite a while now. PO handles
.properties, .dtd, .ini and various other formats as needed. When in PO
you can do whatever you need with your existing PO tools and TM.

Pootle:
This is really just about online management of PO files. You can
translate online or offline. You can host Pootle yourself. But in the
case of FIrefox translation we're encouraging people to translate on the
instance of Pootle that we are managing.

> Also would like to know the
> process from translating Mozilla files on Pootle to conversion into Moz
> and submission to upstream Mozilla hg repos. It would clarify many
> things that I and many of us wanted to understand.

This is process that we are managing at the moment. After an Aurora
release we produce a new set of PO files and update all languages. We
track the PO files in version control.

We upload the PO files to Pootle where the work is also broken down into
various priority sections so that translators can focus on the most
important bits.

We work on 2-3 push backs to Mozilla during a 6 week cycle.

Our tech team converts the PO files back to Mozilla files, commits to HG
and signs off during the 6 week cycle. We check a few things before
signing off, errors in compare-locales and errors on Pootle checks.

For languages not officially in Aurora we create language packs with
each checkin.

Future:
We are continually improving this process and we'll introduce direct
commits for the teams that will automatically do the back conversion and
langpack building.

>
> Btw, Mozilla India Community Team is also suggesting us to host
> translation stuff on their Narro instances. So, it would be greater
> opportunity for us to evaluate tools and decide what could be better for
> each individual Indic team's needs.
>
> Thanks!


--

regards
Dwayne

[Ankitkumar Rameshchandra Patel]

Hi Dwayne,

Thanks for your answers.

Few more queries.

How easy/quick would it be for any language to be hosted on Pootle?
How easy/quick would it be for any language to be removed from Pootle?
Will there by any syncing between upstream Mozilla hg repos and Pootle
hosted translations of Firefox?

Basically, I wanted to try out Pootle for one or two upcoming Firefox
releases for Gujarati Localization.

[Dwayne Bailey]

Worst case is about an hour. A new language is quick, existing
languages I need to convert the latest Mozilla files to PO and commit
them to VC. Then I need login details so that I can give the team lead
admin rights.

> How easy/quick would it be for any language to be removed from Pootle?

Very easy, you just tell me and I switch it off the language and remove
it from out build systems.

> Will there by any syncing between upstream Mozilla hg repos and Pootle
> hosted translations of Firefox?

Once we move to PO we stay on PO. So pushing to Mozilla outside of the
PO files will cause problems for anyone. I could tool around that but
its better to not.

>
> Basically, I wanted to try out Pootle for one or two upcoming Firefox
> releases for Gujarati Localization.

If you are happy with the above then let me know and I'll get Gujarati
loaded on Pootle.

--
regards
Dwayne

[Runa Bhattacharjee]

On সোমবার 12 ডিসেম্বর 2011 08:12 অপরাহ্ণ, Dwayne Bailey wrote:

> I wanted to raise this as a proposal. To host the languages that you are
> working on on the Pootle infrastructure. At the moment we are doing more than
> just hosting, we're processing files into Mercurial, running checks and
> leading people who aren't familiar with Mozilla bugzilla and other tools.
>
> What do you think is this something that could work for Indian languages?

Hi Dwayne,

If a language chooses to use this infrastructure, would all the Mozilla projects
for that language have to move to Pootle? For instance, is it doable if our team
would like only Thunderbird to be hosted here and not Firefox.

Thanks
Runa


--
blog: http://arrbee.wordpress.com
irc: arrbee or runa_b on Freenode
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Runab

[Dwayne Bailey]

On 2011-12-14 11:46, Runa Bhattacharjee wrote:
>
> On সোমবার 12 ডিসেম্বর 2011 08:12 অপরাহ্ণ, Dwayne Bailey wrote:
>
>> I wanted to raise this as a proposal. To host the languages that you are
>> working on on the Pootle infrastructure. At the moment we are doing
>> more than
>> just hosting, we're processing files into Mercurial, running checks and
>> leading people who aren't familiar with Mozilla bugzilla and other
>> tools.
>>
>> What do you think is this something that could work for Indian
>> languages?
>
> Hi Dwayne,
>
> If a language chooses to use this infrastructure, would all the
> Mozilla projects
> for that language have to move to Pootle? For instance, is it doable
> if our team
> would like only Thunderbird to be hosted here and not Firefox.

We haven't opened up Thunderbird - just doing Firefox for now. We will
in future.

I'm relooking at the Mozilla web stuff as we've done that on Pootle
again and a number of languages are going live soon and need to complete
their HTML bits. Same goes for the Google snippets and other *.lang
related files. You could choose to use Pootle for that once I've got it
working correctly.

--
regards
Dwayne

[Danishka Navin]

i was wondering why we need an external pootle service as Mozilla maintain
the verbatim
it would be much easier if they integrate each locale in Mozilla own
verbatim instead of external pootle service.


https://localize.mozilla.org/
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Verbatim

--
Danishka Navin
http://danishkanavin.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/danishkanavin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danishkanavin/

[Runa Bhattacharjee]

On বুধবার 14 ডিসেম্বর 2011 03:55 অপরাহ্ণ, Danishka Navin wrote:

> i was wondering why we need an external pootle service as Mozilla maintain
> the verbatim it would be much easier if they integrate each locale in Mozilla
> own verbatim instead of external pootle service.
>

<More thinking aloud than responding>

To be honest, I'd really prefer it if Mozilla can figure out a coordinated
translation process and tool(s) around them. At any point of time the
translators have to run in circles around the dashboard, bugzilla, repositories,
and now narro and verbatim (along with parallel teams). But then this is not the
right place to have this discussion. Until that happens, (not sure about others
but) I'd welcome any tool does all that abstraction and work for me.

regards

[Dwayne Bailey]

> i was wondering why we need an external pootle service as Mozilla
> maintain the verbatim
> it would be much easier if they integrate each locale in Mozilla own
> verbatim instead of external pootle service.

Perhaps in the future. There is a long history behind this. For now
this is working quite well and getting a lot of African's localising.
To be honest the initiative, at least from the African perspective, is
more then just hosting on Pootle. We are actively encouraging,
recruiting and supporting new teams through the Mozilla process.
Hopefully at the end we have teams that can become or support local
Mozilla communities.

>
>
> https://localize.mozilla.org/
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Verbatim
>
> --
> Danishka Navin
> http://danishkanavin.blogspot.com
> http://twitter.com/danishkanavin
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/danishkanavin/
>
>
>
>

--
regards
Dwayne

[Axel Hecht]

On 14.12.11 11:59, Runa Bhattacharjee wrote:
> On বুধবার 14 ডিসেম্বর 2011 03:55 অপরাহ্ণ, Danishka Navin wrote:
>
>> i was wondering why we need an external pootle service as Mozilla
>> maintain
>> the verbatim it would be much easier if they integrate each locale in
>> Mozilla
>> own verbatim instead of external pootle service.
>>
>
> <More thinking aloud than responding>
>
> To be honest, I'd really prefer it if Mozilla can figure out a coordinated
> translation process and tool(s) around them. At any point of time the
> translators have to run in circles around the dashboard, bugzilla,
> repositories,
> and now narro and verbatim (along with parallel teams). But then this is
> not the
> right place to have this discussion. Until that happens, (not sure about
> others
> but) I'd welcome any tool does all that abstraction and work for me.

The right place for that discussion would be mozilla.tools.l10n.

Jeff summarized a few of the points I made in my preso at MozCamp Berlin
in http://blog.mozilla.com/l10n/2011/12/06/future-of-mozilla-l10n-tools/.

We're a good deal away from a tools ecosystem in which we could start
thinking about how to expose a unified picture between them, sadly.

Axel