[openstack-dev] [i18n] [nova] understanding log domain change - https://review.openstack.org/#/c/439500

Matt Riedemann mriedemos at gmail.com
Mon Mar 6 17:37:06 UTC 2017


On 3/6/2017 10:28 AM, Ian Y. Choi wrote:
>
> +1 and for such discussions including openstack-i18n at lists.openstack.org
> mailing list would be also nice :)
>
> On Barcelona Design Summit, there were I18n contributor meetup and I18n
> team members discussed a lot.
> One of things was not to translate log-level strings for server projects.
>
> Note that such decision was made not because translator time is limited.
>
> Log messages are important to better identify which errors are being
> posed and most operators (+ developers)
> diagnose and start to solve error situations from the log messages.
> I18n team previously translated log messages a lot especially thanks to
> translation contribution from IBM. (AFAIK)

 From what I remember working on an openstack-based product at IBM years 
ago, non-debug messages required translation. That wasn't an openstack 
requirement, that was an IBM product requirement. And way back when the 
IBM products had their own plumbing for i18n and did our own 
translations, and the upstream team of developers pushed and pushed on 
the translation teams to upstream that work to the community which they 
eventually did. Now it sounds like the push from IBM for that work has 
dropped off so no one is really maintaining it.

> However, after then, there have been some voices - why I18n team
> translated log messages?
> After listening to the voices in details, I18n team identified that the
> background of such voices was related with searching log messages on
> Internet.
> Searching English log messages on the Internet will retrieve more number
> of results than searching translated log messages on the Internet.
>
> Translating log messages now has two different point of views:
>  - Will be useful for OpenStack users to better understand log messages
> in details with translated log messages?
>  - Or will not be useful for OpenStack users because the original log
> messages will have better chance to find solutions who occurred the
> similar cases on the Internet?

Another IBM-specific product thing is non-debug translated messages get 
a unique code which isn't translated. So the message is translated, but 
the code isn't, and the code is what you use to lookup the error on the 
internet. There was a proposal to do this in openstack many years ago 
but it never happened.

>
> I18n team discussed with such point of views and on Barcelona Summit the
> latter point would be more important than the former point.
> Also, it would be just a point of view from PTL, but it is difficult for
> me to encourage to contribution translations which have such kind of
> controversy.
>
> Now I would like to listen again to not only developers, but also
> operators and translators - for log string translation.
> If someone thinks that the former point would be more important than the
> latter point, please share through this mailing list to reconsider the
> current decision.
>
>
> With many thanks,
>
> /Ian
>

I'm just trying to provide some context. I don't much care about this 
either way, but it would probably also be good to get input from the 
product work group, user committee and operators to make sure everyone 
is aware of the fact that service logs are no longer translated; this 
was news to me when we were releasing Ocata actually and I was waiting 
for translations for ocata RC2.

-- 

Thanks,

Matt Riedemann



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