Re: .oO - Translation

Hello,

let me first tell what I want and then explain the background.
Before it will be misunderstood again - This is not blaming Google.

I know we discussed and rejected this topic already years ago - but look
why I think
we can't ignore it any longer. And yes - also me always was against
translations -
but Google forced me to change my mind.

I would like to start the project: "translating web pages and docs"
In my case of course into German.
I know it will get a long term project.

I am not sure how much our pages are prepared for it - how much
effort it would be to prepare the project.

I am thinking about having something like postgresql.org/de/
When page not is translated - or out of date - then English should be shown
instead.

Why am I getting these mad idea?

I think Google is the most often used search engine.

I am googling a lot for postgresql + special detail.

Since round about two weeks I recognized that Google got more aggressive
on language topic.

My OS is talking German per default. My Firefox is set to German per
default.

I can't remember if default English was second or if I once manual added it.
The darkness of my brain said - that I needed to load English as 2nd
default once.

Anyway - Already setting - first German then English - reacts ugly.

And consider - I am talking about Linux here. It might be worser on Windows.
Also consider, when you install the browser it takes default language
from OS.
When you want to change it - you need to do it manually. Most users
won't do it.

Since round about two weeks - when I Google for postgresql + special
detail - I get the old German Handbook from Peter as first hit. Afair the
Handbook was for PostgreSQL 7.2 or 7.3.

After that - depending on what exactly I searched - it can happen that I
get "dubious" forums and pages from companies first.

When Google can't find something originally in German - or better after it
find the handbook and the others - it translates the English pages by
automatism.
And believe me - the translations are better then in 198x but you still
will see lots
of horrible translated points.

You then can click a button to show the page in original (English) language.

Of course personally me helps herself by just changing Firefox settings
to first English then German. But that isn't what a normal user is doing.

I would bet that you will find similar phenomena on other "bigger"
languages like French, Italian, Spanish, and so on. Maybe not yet on
Swedish or Dutch.

I am able to understand Google - they just want to provide as much in
your native language as possible. And their automatic translations aren't
that ugly.

Anyway - for me this means - we finally need to react.

Better we translate - then letting Google doing it.
Also, better we translate - so that we will show up as first resulted
row on searching
again.

For German, I am sure I will find some volunteers helping me.

Also since youngest past Google is listing postgresql.de, Peter Handbook
and lots of
other native German stuff like mad forums or advertising pages long
before postgresql.org
pages.

In past it was "newest first" - which always let postgresql.org show on top.
Now it is "native language first" - doesn't matter how outdated or
irrelevant the stuff is.

I fear this translation "delusion" will get more and more worse for us.
People will
find bad advises in forums much earlier then good advises from our home
page.

I like the way how we translate messages.
If not exist - or outdated - then throw out the English message.

Let me say - I made some bad experiences when German and English docs is
independent.

Is it possible to prepare something like this?
Of course not only for German - I bet our French folk would like it too.

Susanne
P.S.: My favorite automatic translation from 198x still is "no space
left on device" -
It got translated to something like "no universe on the left side of
your device".

--
Susanne Ebrecht
Bielefeld

>
> Is it possible to prepare something like this?
> Of course not only for German - I bet our French folk would like it too.
>

I'm not sure to understand exactly what your proposition is about, but i
guess i can give some feedback on how postgresql.fr works...

At first, the postgresql.fr domain was "owned" by a french company. So
the French community pioneers took the postgresqlfr.org domain instead.

With that domain, step by step we built the main web site, a wiki, a
forum, a planet, a forum, a blog, a (now-dead) SVN and of course the
french documentation... And finally, when all the content was there, we
managed to get access to the postgresql.fr domain.

And when i see the work that was done on this platform, i don't feel the
need to translate the .org website. I think our time is better spent in
translating the doc and maintaining a localized website.

All in all, i believe we have pretty nice google rankings, although i'm
sure it could be improved... Especially i think that the various
translation of the doc should be "cross-linked" :

For example it would neat if the VACUUM page

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/sql-vacuum.html

could contain a link to the french version

http://docs.postgresql.fr/9.0/sql-vacuum.html

(and vice versa)

That would be a nice mutual SEO :) But that's another story...

In a nutshell, i think that if you have time for translation you should
start with the doc and host it on a dedicated localized website. It
might be more useful and interesting than translating the .org content

--
damien clochard
dalibo.com | dalibo.org

Hi there,

Le 27/02/2011 21:45, damien clochard a écrit :
> In a nutshell, i think that if you have time for translation you should
> start with the doc and host it on a dedicated localized website. It
> might be more useful and interesting than translating the .org content

I completely agree with Damien as I was about to reply to Miracee.

Cheers,

--
Jean-Paul Argudo
www.PostgreSQLFr.org
www.Dalibo.com

On 27.02.2011 21:45, damien clochard wrote:
> I'm not sure to understand exactly what your proposition is about, but i
> guess i can give some feedback on how postgresql.fr works...

Damien,

I know that the French already do much effort here.
Effort - that wasn't necessary in Germany in past - Also not because
Peter already
once translated and published all years ago.

Of course I am sure we could use postgresql.de here (it belongs somebody
of German community) -
but there are several reasons, why I asked if it is possible with .org:

1. Easier to recognise changes on English original
2. Delivering - for example the Debian guys could deliver docs with packages
depending on language - Or add packages for special language support.
3. Publisher rights - not sure - if it is allowed to publish as "The
PostgreSQL Global Development Group"
under foreign domain.
4. Why reinventing wheel instead of doing it same ways as for messages?
Maybe in contrib instead of core.

Susanne

--
Susanne Ebrecht
Bielefeld

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 10:03, Susanne Ebrecht <miracee(at)web(dot)de> wrote:
> On 27.02.2011 21:45, damien clochard wrote:
>>
>> I'm not sure to understand exactly what your proposition is about, but i
>> guess i can give some feedback on how postgresql.fr works...
>
> Damien,
>
> I know that the French already do much effort here.
> Effort - that wasn't necessary in Germany in past - Also not because Peter
> already
> once translated and published all years ago.
>
> Of course I am sure we could use postgresql.de here (it belongs somebody of
> German community) -
> but there are several reasons, why I asked if it is possible with .org:
>
> 1. Easier to recognise changes on English original

We know from experience that this tends to not work. You'll end up
with partial translation and out-of-date translations. We tried it,
and failed. Then we tried the separate-site (both the french and the
japanese, and I think also the brazilians?) and it has worked really
well.

Nothing prevents you from doing a site that will look exactly the same
but in german. In fact, if you can do that and keep it up to date for
a while, that would be the "proof required" to consider integrating a
fully translated mode.

That said, as a *visitor*, I very much prefer the separate-site method
used by e.g. postgresqlfr, to the integrated method used by some other
sites. It often makes change to have structural differences as well -
in particular if the site isn't 100% translated.

Could we push the translated/local communities better with links
inside the site? Yes, probably. Should we? Yes, probably. But that's a
different thing.

> 2. Delivering - for example the Debian guys could deliver docs with packages
> depending on language - Or add packages for special language support.

They can still do that. Once you have a full translation available
somewhere, it's trivial to package it, and does not depend on *where*
it is.

> 3. Publisher rights - not sure - if it is allowed to publish as "The
> PostgreSQL Global Development Group"
> under foreign domain.

Sure, go right ahead.

> 4. Why reinventing wheel instead of doing it same ways as for messages?
> Maybe in contrib instead of core.

Integrating the translation to the site *is* reinventing the wheel. We
have a wheel that works well now - separate sites. The code we have
for translation on the main site is hopelessly broken and would need
to be rewritten from scratch - and this is not likely to be done as
long as the majority of the people who work with it prefer the
external-site method...

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Magnus,

thousands thanks for your great answer. Seems you totally could follow me.
Of course your answers convinced me.

I will talk to the postgresql.de girls and keep personally you (because
of EU) informed.

Susanne

--
Susanne Ebrecht
Bielefeld

On 2/28/11 1:39 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> We know from experience that this tends to not work. You'll end up
> with partial translation and out-of-date translations. We tried it,
> and failed. Then we tried the separate-site (both the french and the
> japanese, and I think also the brazilians?) and it has worked really
> well.

To be fair, I don't know that there was ever a serious effort to get the
website translated. AFAIK, the code to do so was *always* broken. I
think it's fairly likely that we'd get partial, out-of-date translations
anyway, but we don't actually have any history here to speak of.

Presumably when we move to Django, we can use its built-in multilingual
stuff, no?

--
-- Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://www.pgexperts.com

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 02:07, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
> On 2/28/11 1:39 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> We know from experience that this tends to not work. You'll end up
>> with partial translation and out-of-date translations. We tried it,
>> and failed. Then we tried the separate-site (both the french and the
>> japanese, and I think also the brazilians?) and it has worked really
>> well.
>
> To be fair, I don't know that there was ever a serious effort to get the
> website translated.  AFAIK, the code to do so was *always* broken.  I

Not really. Particularly, translating news and events once worked.

> think it's fairly likely that we'd get partial, out-of-date translations
> anyway, but we don't actually have any history here to speak of.

s/fairly likely/absolutely guaranteed/

We don't even have the resources to keep up with *moderation* all the
time. We don't have anywhere near the resources to do near-real-time
translation.

And IMNSHO, an out-of-date translation is *way* worse than no
translation at all.

> Presumably when we move to Django, we can use its built-in multilingual
> stuff, no?

No. And yes.

There is no magic in django. It has a framework, but you hav eto write
the code to actually use it. We decided not to write that code at all
this time, since there has been zero actual demand (from people who
would do the translation) once the potential requestor realized what
the work actually means.

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Excerpts from Magnus Hagander's message of mar mar 01 14:17:30 -0300 2011:

> > think it's fairly likely that we'd get partial, out-of-date translations
> > anyway, but we don't actually have any history here to speak of.
>
> s/fairly likely/absolutely guaranteed/
>
> We don't even have the resources to keep up with *moderation* all the
> time. We don't have anywhere near the resources to do near-real-time
> translation.
>
> And IMNSHO, an out-of-date translation is *way* worse than no
> translation at all.

What do you call an out-of-date translation? If Dave Fetter submits PWN
today, is the site displayed completely in english tomorrow because we
couldn't find a translator?

Debian handles this nicely: if the original is newer than the
translation, they just display it in english and tell you that there's
an outdated translation which you may want to check.

To be honest I had been hoping this feature was going to be available on
the new site. At least that's what I told the people in Cuba: there is
no need to translate the site right now because we're going to migrate,
so lets hold off until the new site is deployed. Oh well :-(

I guess we'll have to concentrate our efforts in the postgresql.org.es
site.

--
Álvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 20:25, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> Excerpts from Magnus Hagander's message of mar mar 01 14:17:30 -0300 2011:
>
>> > think it's fairly likely that we'd get partial, out-of-date translations
>> > anyway, but we don't actually have any history here to speak of.
>>
>> s/fairly likely/absolutely guaranteed/
>>
>> We don't even have the resources to keep up with *moderation* all the
>> time. We don't have anywhere near the resources to do near-real-time
>> translation.
>>
>> And IMNSHO, an out-of-date translation is *way* worse than no
>> translation at all.
>
> What do you call an out-of-date translation?  If Dave Fetter submits PWN
> today, is the site displayed completely in english tomorrow because we
> couldn't find a translator?

The way it was built before, no, jst that one page. So you got a site
that was partially localized, partially not.

> Debian handles this nicely: if the original is newer than the
> translation, they just display it in english and tell you that there's
> an outdated translation which you may want to check.

Yes, that's the only way you could do it.

> To be honest I had been hoping this feature was going to be available on
> the new site.  At least that's what I told the people in Cuba: there is
> no need to translate the site right now because we're going to migrate,
> so lets hold off until the new site is deployed.  Oh well :-(

Interesting, because in the discussoins that were had, *nobody* spoke
up about that.

But hey, it's open source. Patches welcome. If someone takes it upon
themselves to actually *maintain* code for dealing with it, then we
can certainly do it. But people who don't work with translation, can't
verify things, or anything like that, aren't going to maintain the
code.

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Excerpts from Magnus Hagander's message of mar mar 01 16:36:09 -0300 2011:
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 20:25, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:

> > To be honest I had been hoping this feature was going to be available on
> > the new site.  At least that's what I told the people in Cuba: there is
> > no need to translate the site right now because we're going to migrate,
> > so lets hold off until the new site is deployed.  Oh well :-(
>
> Interesting, because in the discussoins that were had, *nobody* spoke
> up about that.
>
> But hey, it's open source. Patches welcome. If someone takes it upon
> themselves to actually *maintain* code for dealing with it, then we
> can certainly do it. But people who don't work with translation, can't
> verify things, or anything like that, aren't going to maintain the
> code.

I know. Sadly, I think I'm overworked already, so unless someone else
steps in, it's going to stay as it is.

--
Álvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

Le 01/03/2011 18:17, Magnus Hagander a écrit :
>> Presumably when we move to Django, we can use its built-in multilingual
>> > stuff, no?
> No. And yes.
>
> There is no magic in django. It has a framework, but you hav eto write
> the code to actually use it. We decided not to write that code at all
> this time, since there has been zero actual demand (from people who
> would do the translation) once the potential requestor realized what
> the work actually means.

The current website for PG Day Europe is based on dokuwiki which handles
nicely translations. The website in itself is quite simple and for a
while we had 4 versions at the same time ( english, french, italian,
german) but we quickly failed to keep things up-to-date. And right now,
i can't even tell how much lag there is. For a event small website such
as the pgday.eu, that's not very important because obviously the website
lives and dies every year. But for the pg.org, the actual work to keep
pages up-to-date would be really really huge.

i agree with Magnus here, this is not a technical problem. it's a matter
of man power.

By the way, the oracle.fr website is a terrible mess... The front page
is translated in French, but the other pages are an awful mix of
english-french content.

--
damien clochard
dalibo.com | dalibo.org