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IRC Meeting for the coordination between TranslationTool and translation lists

Logs

are here

Date/Time

Monday, 3rd of November, 8 pm Berlin time (GMT+1)

server: irc.indymedia.org channel: #translationtool

was announced on translation@lists.indymedia.org and other lists see: http://translations.indymedia.org/News/1067033437/index_html

Agenda

• The new project issue (introduction of new projects such as event.indymedia.org, topic.indymedia.org, translation.indymedia.org)

• Necessity of a TranslationToolMissionStatement for the TranslationTool. As said at the 1st meeting, we need to "discuss clearly what we need for our translation work (the idea behind the system, scope, for which users it is designed, what scope it shall have)". Twiki pages Translation Tool Mission Statement and Translation Tool Editorial Policy are created to gather the different points of view. When can we have an irc meeting to discuss the texts and adopt a final version?

• The current TranslationTool. Evaluation of the work done during the events in Bolivia. Problems experienced? Possible improvements?
  • The tool needs to become easier to use.
  • syntax change for the language code to give language directions?

• Coordination with the mailing lists (global and local translation lists, www-de)
  • RSS feeds
    • for the lists
      • implementing the feeding of the different lists
      • what should/shouldn't go to the lists?
    • for the individual translators

• Outreach
  • Towards the imc's / tech side (syndication possibilities)
  • Towards the imc's / edito side (people can ask for translations)
  • Towards the translators (we need more translators into more languages)

• Articulation between the dispatch system and the TranslationTool

• Anything else?

Summary [and update 2 weeks after the meeting]

Were present at the meeting: alice, Alster, Anna, briks, clara, duende, ePr64, Fran, geneX, joeri, linksrhein, lize, luna, Na, occam, rabble, Reseda, st3

A translator friendly TranslationTool

It was said that the Tool was not easy enough to use. Since then, comprehensive explanations have been added on the article post and comment post forms. A few changes were also made to the interface and to the strings to make things clearer (the Spanish and Italian versions still need to be updated).

The user guide might also be helpful. There's a link to in on the Translation Tool homepage.

• It's available in English: http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/TranslationToolUserGuide
• and in French: http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/TranslationToolUserGuideFR

If you have more ideas of possible improvements, you are always welcome on channel #translationtool on irc.indymedia.org. You can also send them on the translation list: http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/translation

Outreach

At the moment, mainly central western europeans are involved. This should not prevent us from working but it was stressed that we should try to be more international, attract more people, make some outreach. We already tried to do this through the imc lists of different countries/languages, many sites already link to the TranslationTool and a feature has been proposed on imc global.

Mission statement and edito policy

We decided to create workgroups to draft a mission statement and an editorial policy for the Translation Tool. The mission statement will be discussed at the next irc - meeting on Tuesday 9th december 8pm (GMT).

• TWiki pages are waiting for your comments
  • http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/TranslationToolMissionStatement
  • http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/TranslationToolEditorialPolicy

Coordination with the mailing lists

We stopped the previous meeting with seeing the necessity to automatically forward postings on the Translation Tool to language specific mailinglists. That's what rss-feeds can do. Mailingslists would get only [To do]'s messages. The coordination should then be done on the Tool.

What can be the use of rss-feeds for translators?

From a translator's point of view, rss-feeds have the same function as e-mails sent to a translation list, but can be transferred faster. They give the translator the opportunity to select by himself/herself which information s/he wants to receive. This could be implemented via mailing lists as well, but that would be much more work. A rss-feed gives the translator the opportunity to get infos on - for example - which articles need to be translated from EN to FR. A translator who would like to receive RSS newsfeeds will need to install a little application on his/her computer, which is very little work. Additionally to that, it is very easy to let automated processes make use of this machine readable information, this means newsfeeds can be processed in a whole bunch of ways. For example, the information saying there is a new translation request for the article called ... from source language ... to destination language ... can be easily embedded on websites of local imcs.

• A list of newsfeed readers (which can be installed on one's computer) can be found at http://blogspace.com/rss/readers
• For the more technical aspects of rss-feeds, see also:
  • "How to use rss/rdf - syndication for notification of new postings on the Translation Tool": http://translations.indymedia.org/News/1058320009/index_html
  • "What is RSS?": http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

Dispatch system (input)

About the dispatch system: there are many translations of dispatch news, so dispatch and translation are overlapping at some points. People are working on a connexion between a new dispatch system (input) and the translation tool. Maybe we can put this again on the agenda of the next meeting, since we did not have the opportunity to really discuss it.

Next irc - meeting: Tuesday 9th december 8pm (GMT) (You can find a time converter at http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc)