Open Stack

On Sat, 2013-11-02 at 09:39 +1100, Tom Fifield wrote:
> (CC OpenStack-i18n - consider joining!)
> 
> A very nice lead in discussion to our two sessions related to this at
> the summit :)
> 
> Right now, we have some custom code for 1 that has been customised for
> the OpenStack docs (for example, it excludes screen elements ;)), giving
> some of the practical benefits of ITS. It's in tools/generatepot.

Thanks Tom. I didn't realize we actually had our own segmentation and
merging tools in openstack-manuals. That makes it easier to decide on
each piece of the puzzle separately.

Looking at the scripts, I see they're actually using xml2po for all the
heavy lifing. xml2po was written around 2003/2004 by Danilo Šegan with
help from Claude Paroz. I inherited maintainership of it around 2009. I
tried to bend it to do things it wasn't designed for until I discovered
ITS. I began rearchitecting xml2po on top of ITS in 2010. itstool is the
result of that work.

> Looking forward to discussing more next week.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Tom
> 
> On 02/11/13 05:34, Shaun McCance wrote:
> > I have some experience (read: bias) in translation tools, so I'm writing
> > up a synopsis in the hopes in will be useful for the documentation
> > translation session at the summit next week.
> > 
> > Document translation generally follows a three-step process:
> > 
> > 1) Segmentation: A program takes the XML files and breaks it up into
> > chunks (often paragraphs) that can be individually translated and
> > tracked. These are usually stored in either PO or XLIFF files, but in
> > some systems they might be records in a database.
> > 
> > 2) Translation: Translators translate those segments. They might edit
> > the PO or XLIFF files directly. They might use a graphical front-end.
> > They might do it through a web site that hides the files from them, but
> > still presents the individual segments.
> > 
> > 3) Merging: A program takes the translated segments, matches them up to
> > the appropriate nodes in the source document, and writes a localized XML
> > file.
> > 
> > Online tools like Transifex, Zanata, and Pootle are really about step 2,
> > but they often include code for steps 1 and 3 to give you an all-in-one
> > package. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, none of them use the W3C
> > Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) to accomplish those steps. Luckily,
> > they let you provide POT files and can give you PO files, which means
> > you can plug your own code in for steps 1 and 3.
> > 
> > ITS is a W3C recommendation that provides a standard way to specify what
> > parts of a document are translatable, what elements are inline, and
> > various other things that are really critical for good segmentation. ITS
> > 2.0 was released this week, and addresses a whole slew of other issues.
> > 
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/its20/
> > 
> > ITS lets you assert things about elements on a global level using XPath
> > expression. For example, let's say we don't want any of our screen
> > elements to be translated. We could use a rule like this:
> > 
> > <its:translateRule translate="no" selector="//db:screen"/>
> > 
> > Magically, hundreds of messages will disappear from translators' view,
> > allowing them time to have dinner with their families instead. You can
> > also mark things locally. So for example, if we don't want to exclude
> > all screen elements from translation, then on the ones we do want to
> > exclude, we'd write this:
> > 
> > <screen its:translate="no">
> > 
> > You can also specify which elements are within text (inline), which are
> > space-preserving, where there are references to external resources like
> > images that have to be localized, and lots more.
> > 
> > Biased opinion: If you have an XML translation process that doesn't
> > involve ITS, you're doing something wrong. (Disclosure: I was on the
> > working group that created ITS 2.0, and I'm the developer of itstool.)
> > 
> > There are a number of tools that support ITS. Many of them work with PO
> > or XLIFF files, so you can plug them into most online translation tools.
> > I happen to be fond of my program, itstool, which supports PO files and
> > has a number of extensions that have been useful for other open source
> > projects like GNOME. 
> > 
> > http://itstool.org/
> > 
> > If you want a workflow that uses XLIFF files, you should look into
> > Okapi, a fantastic open source framework that supports ITS.
> > 
> > http://okapi.sourceforge.net/
> > 
> > I do have a dog in this race, so I'm trying not to be too pushy. But
> > there are a lot of smart people who spent a lot of time figuring this
> > stuff out. If you have non-ITS segmentation and merging code, you'll
> > just end up chasing problems that have already been solved.
> > 
> > If it's not obvious, I love talking about this stuff. So feel free to
> > ask me questions.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Shaun
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Openstack-docs at lists.openstack.org
> > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-docs
> > 
> 
> 
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