Pootle

Contact: Alfonsodg —Rafael Ortiz, Xavi

These are the notes taken and rough sketches for the processes involved in the localization effort in order to use Pootle as a more liberal l10n platform.

There are several scenarios that depend on the roles and their associated responsibilities (ie: translators, coders, administrators, etc). Below we outline the two most important ones from the POV of the translators that we could classify as either the opportunistic translator (fixing a typo or translating a few missing strings) and a registered translator (that is somehow more committed with the whole l10n reality).

If we consider that in the ultimate case children will be dealing with code (thus with gettext), we want things and processes to be as simple and straight forward as possible, so that in the end anybody will be able to translate. With this in mind, we aim for an environment that will:

allow anybody to make suggestions,
allow registered users to make translations, and
administrators to commit.

If the quality is not satisfactory, we can probably revert to more 'traditional' and bureaucratic structures; or try to develop tools that guarantee or hint appropriately without sacrificing the liberty and agility that will be required by children.

Basic Scenarios

Opportunistic translator

This user just wants to help. She/he doesn't want to get tangled in the administrative tasks. The only possible collaboration available is to suggest translations (which will be reviewed by users who have been granted the Review permission in a particular language).

After navigating to the olpc pootle server project: olpc language: spanish to finally reach a file (ie: TamTamSynthLab)

The interface will display a series of PO entries (one will have the focus—if it doesn't, hovering over one will make an 'Edit' link appear that enables it—showing an entry field, and the following controls:

a picture is worth 1000 words

Back & Skip buttons — jump to the previous or next entry
Copy button — copies the original (msgid) value and continues in edit mode
Suggest button — the actual collaboration of suggesting a translation
Fuzzy checkbox — denotes that the suggested translation is/is not 100% trustworthy
Special characters specific to the language (see #Languages)
grow / shrink — allows growing and shrinking of the entry field (see #User options
Translator comments field — comments either extracted from the source code, or added by other translators

The opportunistic translator then proceeds to navigate the file/s entering suggestions (to be processed later by the reviewers).

Admin notes: The Suggest permission must be granted on a per-language-project basis.; Each language may have specific or special characters that are may not be available in the user's keyboard, but can be provided for in the #Language specification.

Registered translator

The default #user permissions apply to any registered user (unless they are overridden in case-by-case approach). In the out-of-the-box install they include: View, Suggest, Archive & Compile PO files

The process is similar to the #Opportunistic translator with the exception that you have an extra button [Submit] that effectively translates the string.

Admin notes: In a collaborative and low-entry-barrier process, the administrator/s should enable the default user to actually translate — projects | olpc | language | permissions +Translate.

User Scenarios

Register as a translator

Head towards the pootle site
Follows the register link where you fill the following fields: Username, Password, Confirm password, Full Name & Email Address, clicking on the [Register Account] button that will send a confirmation message to the email address with the activation code.
Following the link in the email will activate the newly created account. After which it will ask you to login and take you to your user page.

User options

In your user page there's a link to Change options that will allow you define some things:

Projects you wish to participate (for the moment only olpc should be considered a valid option)
Languages you wish to collaborate in. If you don't find your language, as an administrator you can associate it to the project (see #Languages) or as a mere mortal, you should contact an administrator.
Other options like personal data & translation UI are present.

After configuring, don't forget to hit the [Save changes] button to make them effective, after which you can return to your #user page by means of the Home Page link.

User page

aka: 'Home', or 'My account' page.

You can reach your user page following the Home or My account link (depending on where you are) and it will show the appropriate links to the selected projects grouped by languages:

The language link takes you to the statistics page per project
the project-in-a-language link takes you the the statistics page displaying all its files

Advanced User Scenarios

Reviewer

A user who has been granted the Review permission, may accept or reject the suggestions made by users (who must have the Suggest permission). The way to do this is there another? is to go to a language/project combination (ie: spanish-olpc) and follow the Show Editing Functions. Here you have two alternatives: review the whole set of suggestions in the language-project set, or work on the suggestions present in a specific file (ie: all suggestions or TamTamSynthLab suggestions).

Once in the review UI, the reviewer has four options: Accept, Reject, Back or Skip which are self evident, but nevertheless will mention:

Accept: the reviewer translator accepts the suggestion and is registered
Reject: the suggested translation is rejected does that mean erased for the user or the file?
Back: goes to the previous suggestion assume a previous non-accepted/rejected suggestion
Skip: goes to the next available suggestion

In the case where multiple suggestions have been made, each one has its Accept & Reject buttons, while only the last will have the Back & Skip buttons.

Regardless of the multiplicity of suggestions, each suggested string will be diffed with the current string highlighting the changes. It also displays (if available) the name of the user that made the suggestion.

Editing functions

This section of the UI displays on a per-file basis several functionalities that depend on the permissions of the user:

Translate My Strings: enter the translate UI limiting the visibility to those strings assigned to the user. explore
Quick Translate My Strings: same as above, unknown difference. explore
Quick Translate: enter the translate UI over the whole set? explore
Translate All: explore
PO file: used for off-line translators in order to retrieve the whole .PO file.
XLIFF file: used for off-line translators and interfaces to retrieve the whole file in said format. explore
Qt .ts file: explore
CSV file: explore

Administrator Scenarios

Administration

As an administrator, in your home page you have access to the Admin page which offers: Users, Languages & Projects. There are other general options of yet unknown use and impact.

Users: is a simple interface allowing the manual addition of users, edition of their names & (invisible) passwords (ie: resetting them) and where you can activate, de-activate and remove an user.

Languages: allows the maintenance of the list of available languages (based on the ISO 639 codes, a descriptive text, special characters (used in the translating UI), defining the number of plurals and its equation.; NOTE: I've removed several (traditional) languages trying to limit the list to the core green languages: am, ar, en, es, fr, ha, hi, ig, ne, pt, ro, ru, rw, th, ur, & yo. Still pending: plural formulas.

Projects: this is the initial page where things come together. Besides being able to add/remove project (what are all the other fields? you can follow each project to define the 'enabled languages' for it, and where you can add more languages. how do you remove a language from a project??; This is where you can also update from templates—POTs. The update from templates functionality is still not understood.; For example, following the olpc project link you will find the list of languages. Each language (a link) takes you to the user permissions in said project-language combination which is where you can specify the set of #User permissions to be used in it.

Defining goals

see Pootle::Goals

Goals are required in order to be able to assign translations, thus enabling the organizing and prioritizing of work within a given language-project (iow, no global goals). Also worth noting, goals seem to be nothing more than a 'bundle name', with no other data like deadlines, comments or anything else.

In order to define a goal you must enable the Show Goals in the project page, and on the right, there's an entry field to add new.

Define a goal in the project page (ie: spanish-olpc) toggle the Show Goals
- by default a null-goal (ie: Not in a goal) exists as a catch all.
- on the right, a box with an entry field allows you to give a name and Add Goal.
Assign files to a goal
- as we are trying to include files into a goal, click on the Not in a goal
- make sure that the Show Editing Funcions is enabled by clicking on it if necessary
- once in the language-project-goals view (showing the 'Not in a goal' files), each file has a pull-down list to pick and set the goal.

After setting the goals you can view the files bundled in a goal, and later assign work.

Assigning translations

see Pootle::Assigning

Setting up version control systems

see Pootle::Version control

Defining & using terminology

see Pootle::Terminology

see Pootle::Matching

This is an extremely helpful functionality, particularly if we want to open the translation process to non-professional and #Opportunistic translators because it aids them in preserving the terminology that has been decided upon by the more involved segments of the community (ie: will the olpc.es translate "cat" as "gato" or "mish"?)

The structure of the terminology file is a standard .PO file (ie: msgid / msgstr). And (apparently) many could co-exist (ie: color.po, hig.po, etc. There are ways need to explore on how to override the default terminology searches per project.

Although the documentation is not crystal clear on where and how these terminology files would go, a simple test has been made and works.

The steps, as an administrator, were:

Enable the languages for which you want to have terminology:
- in the projects page head into the terminology project
- verify that the language is listed (if not add it) (ie: spanish terminology)
- verify that #user permissions are granted (if you are going to allow web-GUI edition of the terminology)
Join the project
- as an user, in your #User options join the terminology project
- enter the project (ie: spanish terminology
- upload a new file or edit the existing one (ie: xavitest.po

You are 'done'. When later translating anything in the 'spanish' branch, the xavitest.po will be used to propose translations in a dynamic way.

really done? Need to verify process

Taking advantage of translation memory

see Pootle::TM

User permissions

see Pootle::Permissions

Permissions are granted or revoked within a specific language-project pair, and optionally, within that scope, to specific users. This means that the nobody & default users have local, instead of global, behaviors.

The following is the list of the available permissions handled by Pootle. The actual description is a result of observation and deduction (haven't found a specific documentation on them), so they are to be considered with #, fuzzy tag...

Permission	Description	Default users	Comments
View	Allows the browsing of the PO files and their translation	`nobody, default`
Suggest	Allows to suggest a translation	`default`	this should be enabled for `nobody` if we want to make things simpler for the #Opportunistic translator.
Translate	Allows to submit a translation.	none	By default there are no users allowed to translate forcing the administrator to grant this right—bureaucratic and restrictive.
Overwrite	When uploading a PO file, it allows the user to overwrite any existing file (iow, no merge of changes)	none	Handle with care.
Review	Allows to approve/reject suggestions made by users capable of suggesting translations.	none	see #Reviewer
Archive	Would allow the user to download the a set of PO files in zip format. Probably those of a language/project.	none
Compile PO files	Allows an user to generate / compile the PO into MO files.	none	It is unknown where the MO files will reside, or how they will be transfered or made available. need to explore
Assign	Allows an user to assign files (or chunks of files) amongst users that have been granted the translate permission.	none	need to explore
Administrate	It's granularity is not well defined (or understood): administrate everything (seems like it), or just a project? or just a language? or just a language-in-a-project?	none	need to explore
Commit	The holy grail or point of all this: make a translation available.	none	Again, the granularity is not well defined or understood. need to explore

Advanced site administration

Lowering latency through web servers: see Pootle::Apache; see Pootle::NginX
Translator statistics: see Pootle::LogStats
Configurable logos: see Pootle::Changes
Removing / Renaming files: According to user friedel in IRC#pootle, you can 'safely' delete a file (and associates—ie: xyzzy.es.po.pending) without much to worry about. This has to be done outside of Pootle.

Proving Grounds

We are currently testing in an ad-hoc trial site

about the pootle server
olpc project statistics
(PO files were uploaded from fedora—except spanish, which came from the PO versions in the wiki)

Language	Translated		Fuzzy		Untranslated		Total	Diff.Spanish
arabic	198	78%	7	2%	48	18%	253	1425
portuguese BR	174	84%	12	5%	19	9%	205	1473
french	144	67%	15	7%	53	25%	212	1466
portuguese	12	42%	0	0%	16	57%	28	1650
spanish	1336	79%	342	20%	0	0%	1678

Observations

You can download the PO, so there's no forcing of the on-line UI.
In the translation interface, fuzzy entries are grayed out and there's a gray vertical line separating the terms

To Do

Usage

Define goals
Assign translations
Merge of uploaded PO
Check if there any kind of verification when a PO file is uploaded to ensure the up-to-dateness of the original POT on which it is based? (ie: a PO is loaded but the POT on which it is based is a an older version)
Delete files (this is done outside of Pootle directly on them... some things will protest, but is the 'accepted procedure')
Update from templates (this needs the git interface on one side, but also if a POT is updated by whichever means, the PO should be merged/solved)
Define a workflow! — the #Basic Scenarios above just cover the translator part. After the git interface is tested, the handling of the developer input, and the Pootle output must be defined.

Config

Interface with GIT — both on importing POTs & POs from it & exporting POs back to it.
- Version Control doc (scant doc on configuration)
- Alfonso has patched the server with the git support and installed git in the server. So we should be almost in condition to start testing against dev.laptop.org.
For completion's sake, language plurals & associated formulas must be defined (a bit pointless if developers don't actually do i18n right though, but...)

Done

user creation (both through the admin & registration interface that uses confirmation codes via mail)
add / remove languages (basically reduced the set to green countries languages in order to focus attention)
add project (only one for 'olpc' — deleting is
associate languages & projects
define permissions for nobody, default and specific user
upload PO file (note: it doesn't verify against the templates, so you may end up uploading anything anywhere... handle with care)
translate on line — may be a bit slow although it could be the browser, connection or server (see #Advanced site administration)
used the suggest funcionality, hit bug with review (see #Bug dealing with Suggestions)

Glitches

Something related to encodings was wrong during the setup
Alfonso commented several language specs that apparently were iso8859 instead of UTF ??

Bug dealing with Suggestions

There seems to be something awry with the suggestions... somehow there seems to be a mismatch between the msgid for which the suggestion was made, and the msgid displayed in the review process. IOW, you suggest foo as a translation of bar, but in the review process it will show it as a suggestion for xyzzy!! review problem!

Talking in IRC#pootle, the following emerged: the mechanism used to associate a given suggestion is based on the #: comments (usually documenting the source code line where the string is located). This mechanism fails when there are more than one strings extracted from the same source line.

Possible solutions & workarounds

the problem is relatively serious as it inhibits the #Opportunistic translator (or any other translator) from making suggestions (as they may get lost).

modify the source code to avoid having more than one gettext string per line.
modify the POT to avoid duplicate comments (iow, a manual process)
disable the suggestions
- explore the possibility of having the offending POT in another project where suggestions are not allowed (thus avoid reviewers get bitten by it).
patch Pootle (or file a bug)