Obsolete Malayalam translations

Asked by Santhosh Thottingal

Binary package hint: language-pack-gnome-ml

Problem:
-------------------
The gnome translations in this package is very old and wrong. It differs a lot from the upstream GNOME translations. Rosetta translations are not reviewed and not correct. Please take the translations from upstream or debian package.

Examples:
-----------------
In 'Places' menu, 'Computer' is translated as CNET Computers.Com. But in upstream translations it is correct
In Places menu, Network is translated as ചെമന്ന് തൊപ്പിശൃംഖല(meaning Red Hat Network)
The 'Applications' in GNOME main menu is translated as പ്രയോഗങ്ങള് which has spelling mistake
The Systems menu is വ്യൂഹവിളികള് -wrong translation with spelling mistakes.

Many wrong translations present in gnome applications too. Either because ubuntu packaged very old translations or took translations from Rosetta instrad of Upstream
All these are correctly translated in GNOME upstream

Since main GNOME menu itself has lot of spelling mistakes and wrong translations, the ml_IN interface of GNOME in Ubuntu is useless

Ubuntu Version: 9.04

Expected Result
---------------------
Package using translations from GNOME upstream translations

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
For:
Ubuntu language-pack-gnome-ml Edit question
Assignee:
Saji Nediyanchath Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:

This question was originally filed as bug #368387.

Revision history for this message
Ashik Salahudeen (aashiks) said :
#1

Bug tested and confirmed.

-- Ashik S (Swathanthra Malayalam Computing )

Revision history for this message
Rajiv Nair (rajivnair-in) said :
#2

I confirm the same. This bug as been present from Ubuntu 7.10 atleast and is present in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS if I'm not wrong.

Revision history for this message
Arne Goetje (arnegoetje) said :
#3

If the bug has been present for such a long time, why is it only reported now?

Can you please join the https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-l10n-ml team and correct the errors in Rosetta? Setting the translated strings to 'Packaged' means: use upstream translations. Please also address this issue in the team and point them to bugs to fix them.

The bug fixes will show up in the next language-pack updates automatically then.

Revision history for this message
Anivar Aravind (anivar) said :
#4

Confirmed the bugs. It is an Ubuntu Only bug . Rosetta doesnot translations done by language communities in upstream. and it becomes a place of rands that affects distribution.

Take Translations from Gnome upstream to Fix the problem.

Revision history for this message
Arne Goetje (arnegoetje) said :
#5

Anivar, please read my comment on how to fix this. The only way to fix this is in Rosetta itself. Become a member of the Malayalam team and fix those translations in Rosetta.
Upstream translations do get imported into Rosetta regularly. But they don't get selected to be used automatically. This needs to be done by hand, or if the team agrees, can be reset for all translations or for a list of source packages by the Rosetta admins.

So, we need some input from the Malayalam team here.

Revision history for this message
Anivar Aravind (anivar) said :
#6

Dear Arne Goetje,

Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(smc) is the language team works in Gnome & KDE upstream. It is a group with more than 70+ translators who made malayalam as an official language in Gnome (from 2.16 Onwards ) and KDE (4.1 Onwards). I am a member of that team. we prefer to stay away from distro specific Duplicate work. Fedora & Debian Directly take other language related packages (fonts, spell checkers , etc) from our repositories.

In the past 2-3 years we have seen the buggy translations in Ubuntu and pointed the need of taking an upstream approach to our friends in Ubuntu india loco team. We also checked for the possibility for creating a team to block spoilers from rosetta by creating a team before 2 years. But privileges were not granted and it never worked. This is the first time i came to know about the existence of a malayalam l10n team .

I request you to put this before team (i dont know rosetta procedures and personally refuse to be part of that because of its non-free non upstream approach) and set it to upstream translations. Fedora & debian is good in this case and widely used because of better malayalam support .

Anivar

Revision history for this message
Anivar Aravind (anivar) said :
#7

It seems i am also a member in Ubuntu-l10n-ml team you pointed. I Joined in it long back in 2007 while trying to set up quality control mechanism to save Our Translations from Rosetta spoilers.

AFAIK It is a group with no activity .

Revision history for this message
Arne Goetje (arnegoetje) said :
#8

Anivar,

yes, I was a bit confused, because I found several translations which were done by you and diverge from the 'Packaged' (i.e. upstream) ones.

In other words, you do have the power to change those "buggy" strings to use the "Packaged" ones instead. If you look at the overview (https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+lang/ml), you can see if the translations came from upstream (green color), have been done in launchpad only (purple) or have been done in Launchpad before, but upstream ships different strings (= changed) (blue). The "Changed" and "Needs review" columns will lead you to those ones which differ from upstream.

I saw several of those conflicting strings have been done by you back in 2007 and also by the bug reporter Santhosh. Since you know that language best, it would be nice if you could do the review and adjust the strings where necessary.

Revision history for this message
Anivar Aravind (anivar) said :
#9

I never done any Translations of any reported Conflicting strings. My efforts in 2007 was also to fix these bugs by setting up a Quality Control team
I am not ready to contribute to Rosetta translations anymore. There are a lot of spoiler translations in ubuntu. We have better translations in Upstream. Ubuntu admins just need to accept it and save Malayalam Translations From Rosetta spoilers

Anivar

Revision history for this message
Arne Goetje (arnegoetje) said :
#10

OK, from the overview page, the following templates do have translations which differ from upstream. The number of affected strings is in brackets. They are not so many, so can be done manually quickly. If you say they should be changed to upstream "no matter what", I can do that for you (you can also do that by yourself!), if you say you might want to check first, please do so and adjust the rest.

gtk20 (196)
libgnomeui-2.0 (161)
gnome-panel-2.0 (108)
gnome-control-center-2.0 (97)
gnome-applets-2.0 (88)
debian-installer (87)
libgnome-2.0 (64)
gnome-desktop-2.0 (24)
metacity (22)
gnome-session-2.0 (20)
gnome-menus (18)
gnome-system-tools (18)
konqueror (10)
gnome-screensaver (1)
gnome-power-manager (1)

Apart from these there are no spoilers.

Revision history for this message
Anivar Aravind (anivar) said :
#11

Please Change everything to upstream. That is well maintained with Quality Control .

Revision history for this message
Santhosh Thottingal (santhosh-thottingal) said :
#12

Yes, pointing everything to upstream should solve the problem. We have a peer review process with in our l10n community and that take care of the quality of strings in Gnome upstream. We can avoid the effort duplication in Rosetta too.
I hope when you point the strings to upstream, it is a permanent fix, ie, for all future versions/updates the strings are always taken from upstream

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Arne Goetje (arnegoetje) said :
#13

No, it can't be a permanent fix, for technical reasons. Currently everyone can modify any template for Malayalam, because there is no team assigned. The only way to ensure that noone tempers with the translations is to create a team, get the assignment for this language and only accept trusted members into the team. Then only the team members are able to approve translations.
But please keep in mind that several templates are upstream in Rosetta. Those need to be translated there.
Also, it would be nice if you could take those translations from Rosetta which are only translated there (purple color in the status bar) and forward them to upstream.

Further more, some upstream translations do have buggy strings and need to be fixed. For example in gnumeric: https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+source/gnumeric/+pots/gnumeric/ml/+translate?show=new_suggestions

Those strings (Packaged == upstream) don't match the cformat variables in the msgid.

When I'm done with changing the strings to the upstream values, I will show you how to find the broken upstream translations.

Revision history for this message
Saji Nediyanchath (saji89) said :
#14

Since, I have formed the new team for Malayalam translations in Ubuntu, I think I'll assign this problem to myself, and try to come on a solution, after discussing with SMC, and Ubuntu Translation Coordinators team.

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Santhosh Thottingal for more information if necessary.

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