Open Stack

Hi team,

I am writing this mail to announce my less activity in Newton cycle
(as I18n project) and
will focus on translations and reviews of my focused and interested areas
(i.e, dashboards and documentations).
Translation is just my spare-time activity, so I need to choose how to
spend my time.

I have been involved in OpenStack translation activity before the I18n
team is organized.
The community is growing continuously and it is time for me to focus
on translation itself again.
I have made various activities including the following for the i18n team so far,
but most of them are now over or can be shared by the community.

  * Coordinate the translation import timing for Horizon (now
importing translation are done automatically)
  * Coordinate the final release timing of dashboards (now we have
cross-project liaisons. it is no longer a personal role.)
  * Coordinate translation imports for stable updates (now imported
automatically)
  * Provide translation check site for dashboards (we will have the
official translation check site
    and I intentionally decided not to provide such site to encourage
the effort in the i18n project.)
  * Continuously improve the upstream of Horizon and documentations
for translation friendly.
  * Setup translation setup for horizon plugins in Mitaka (Completed)
  * Write various documentations around translation and I18n activities

Finally, I would like to share several thoughts and suggestions for
the i18n project
before stepping down from the main activity of the i18n team.
I hope the community is healthy enough and see much progress in Newton.
I will help your efforts from individual project side.

* Glossary management:
  It needs to be improved along with a new version of Zanata.
  The basic process itself on how to update glossary is not documented.
  In addition to this, contextual information support would be great.

* Release notes translation

* Documentation around i18n are spread:
  * We have i18n related documentations in several places.
    The infra manuals, horizon devref docs, i18n docs, and openstack wiki.
    We should have better guidance for readers considering their interests.
    Although appropriate place depends on a content, the i18n team
should lead the effort.
  * Need more documentations for various processes.
    For example, how we decide prioritized projects for translations
should be documented.
    In Mitaka translations, some dashboard plugin whose member
responded in the ML
    is prioriptized and some plugin who added an entry to the cross
project liaison
    wiki page are not. This is unfair.
    Another example is the criteria of the language list of Horizon
translations.
    Maintaining the translation check site is another one.

* Discussion process:
  I previously proposed several questions or improvements via MLs or gerrit.
  In many times, hey let's discuss in team meetings and that's all.
  No feedback or continued discussion on the original place where
discussions happened.
  This is the point I feel frustrated and one of reason I am leaving.
  I understand IRC meeting is important, but that's not all.
  I am not a full-timer for translations and it leads most meeting
times do not work.
  Translations are supported by not small number of volunteers, so I believe
  more async communications like ML or gerrit should be encouraged.

* Better translation quality with technical knowledge:
  * Previously we try to increase the number of translators to
encourage transltaions.
    I think it is now time to improve the quality of translations for
languages translated well.
    To improve the translation quality, understanding OpenStack
projects is inevitable.
    It is not enough to see strings in Zanata.
  * We need to explore a way how to improve the quality.
    In addition to involving technical contributors in translation reviews,
    I believe pure translators understand the basics of OpenStack
projects and their concepts.
    As I mentioend in a recent IRC meeting (which I could luckily job),
    translation and reviews of documentations are one of ways to
understand OpenStack projects.
  * For example, in Japanese translations, I played a role of
technical reviewers so far,
     but I am not scalable, so I cannot play this role and have no
more time to review
     server side projects which I am not interested in translations for.
     I believe other language teams have similar problems.

Thanks for your all help so far.
Note that I will continue my role as i18n liaison of horizon and neutron.
I also continue to be a translator and a reviewer.

Best Regards,
Akihiro