> Some time ago I sent an email to the Trinity-devel list with my experiences installing TDE in
> Debian Squeeze. Having passed a reasonable time, I want to stress again
> the importance of paying attention to the bugs (there are several of significant
> importance, and one more has been added since then,eg http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=1321 and
> http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=1232).
> And I want to be constructive and I want to support improved TDE (I
> think that is the best of all *), again I offer my help to fix them,
> as there are several issues that I can help (those related to translation lacks into Spanish)
> so I would really like if are enabled channels for the participation of
> collaborators in fields such as translation (I think it's necessary to ensure the future of TDE).

Bugs are bugs. They will be resolved eventually. :) Translations are a different topic.

A serious challenge we have at the moment is we don't have any how-to or guide to help people translate text. There are two primary file types containing translations: po and docbook files. Each file type needs attention.

Another challenge is all original text is written in English. A translator therefore needs a good grasp of English as well as his or her native language. Yet even with that grasp, somebody with a native English background should be available to help or mentor translators to ensure context is translated correctly because not all non-native English speakers will understand context correctly.

Another challenge for anybody trying to update these files is not speaking the other languages. When I update these file types with simple updates, such as converting instances of kde -> tde, I have no way to know whether the changes I make are good or whether I introduced incorrect translations. I have to be very careful when making such changes such that I don't perform a massive global search-and-replace that modifies text within other text strings that should not be changed. I have seen this happen often with other patches.

In the end, somebody native to each language has to review all texts and be willing and able to offer changes. They don't have to offer patches, just text files of what to change. Somebody else can convert the changes to a patch.

To start all of this, we really need a basic guide at the wiki to help translators.

Darrell