Translation of git manpages

Translation of git manpages

[Jean-Noël AVILA]

Dear fellow translators,

I'm trying to put up a longstanding project of providing translated manual 
pages for Git. After several experiments, the best choice seemed to be the use 
of po4a[1] to convert the asciidoc[2] sources of git manpages into po files 
that could be processed the same way we are already doing for the translation 
of Git itself.

The text is segmented into paragraphs and structural units (titles, list 
items...) and when translated, they are reinjected into the original text 
structure. Only inline asciidoc formatting marks are passed in segments. 

The translation takes place in a dedicated repository[3]  . It simpler to not 
meddle in git main workflow while adjusting the translation workflow. If 
everybody is satisfied with it, we can maybe migrate the repo under git 
organization. Now, this repo is standalone with respect to translation content 
source, but a patch has been submitted so that the translated manpages can be 
generated and installed from the main git project[4]. Symmetrically, there's a 
script in the project to pull the manpages source files from the main git repo. 

The repository is connected to Weblate[5]  if you have collaborators who don't 
know how to process po files and prefer translating in the browser. 

The repository is also open to pull-request on the tooling. Let me know if you 
have issues. In any case, the translation work can be reused for any other 
arrangements.

There is already a kernel of translation in French, from my experiments and a 
previous effort of German translation[6] was gettextized. If you have such 
archives for other languages, I'd be happy to integrate them, even if they are 
not up to date.

--
Jean-Noël

[1]: https://po4a.org/
[2]: http://asciidoc.org/
[3]: https://github.com/jnavila/git-manpages-l10n
[4]: https://public-inbox.org/git/20190104165406.22358-1-jn.avila@free.fr/
[5]: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/git-manpages/translations/
[6]: https://repo.or.cz/w/gitman-de.git

Re: Translation of git manpages

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Mon, Jan 07 2019, Jean-Noël AVILA wrote:

> Dear fellow translators,
>
> I'm trying to put up a longstanding project of providing translated manual
> pages for Git. After several experiments, the best choice seemed to be the use
> of po4a[1] to convert the asciidoc[2] sources of git manpages into po files
> that could be processed the same way we are already doing for the translation
> of Git itself.
>
> The text is segmented into paragraphs and structural units (titles, list
> items...) and when translated, they are reinjected into the original text
> structure. Only inline asciidoc formatting marks are passed in segments.
>
> The translation takes place in a dedicated repository[3]  . It simpler to not
> meddle in git main workflow while adjusting the translation workflow. If
> everybody is satisfied with it, we can maybe migrate the repo under git
> organization. Now, this repo is standalone with respect to translation content
> source, but a patch has been submitted so that the translated manpages can be
> generated and installed from the main git project[4]. Symmetrically, there's a
> script in the project to pull the manpages source files from the main git repo.
>
> The repository is connected to Weblate[5]  if you have collaborators who don't
> know how to process po files and prefer translating in the browser.
>
> The repository is also open to pull-request on the tooling. Let me know if you
> have issues. In any case, the translation work can be reused for any other
> arrangements.
>
> There is already a kernel of translation in French, from my experiments and a
> previous effort of German translation[6] was gettextized. If you have such
> archives for other languages, I'd be happy to integrate them, even if they are
> not up to date.

Thanks. This has come up on list many times before and it's great to
have some movement on it.

I think a way to have early exposure of these to a lot more people would
be to have these on the git-scm.com site. Jeff knows more about the
build process there.

I see the general completion of French & German is at ~10%, but maybe
there's some pages that are fully translated already? We could then have
some UI or git-scm.com that allows you to switch between languages along
with some general overview page per-language.

Are the translations contributed through
https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/git-manpages/translations/ something
that license-wise (Signed-off-by etc.) we'd eventually be able to
upstream in git.git?

It would be great to eventually have something we can build as part of
our build process, so e.g. Debian can have git-man-de similar to
manpages-de now.

Re: Translation of git manpages

[Jeff King]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2019 at 02:54:36PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> > There is already a kernel of translation in French, from my experiments and a
> > previous effort of German translation[6] was gettextized. If you have such
> > archives for other languages, I'd be happy to integrate them, even if they are
> > not up to date.
> 
> Thanks. This has come up on list many times before and it's great to
> have some movement on it.
> 
> I think a way to have early exposure of these to a lot more people would
> be to have these on the git-scm.com site. Jeff knows more about the
> build process there.

Actually, Jean-Noël has done as much or more work as me on the manpage
(and book) build process for the site. :)

Basically, we just pull the pages from git.git, run them through
asciidoctor with a few ugly regex tweaks, and then that goes to the
site. We should be able to do the same for translations, and I agree
that even partial translations on the site may be a good way to get
exposure. The way the book translations are handled is probably a
workable model.

-Peff

Re: Translation of git manpages

[Jean-Noël Avila]

On Wed, Jan 09 2019, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> > I think a way to have early exposure of these to a lot more people >
would be to have these on the git-scm.com site. Jeff knows more about >
the build process there. > > I see the general completion of French &
German is at ~10%, but > maybe there's some pages that are fully
translated already? We could > then have some UI or git-scm.com that
allows you to switch between > languages along with some general
overview page per-language.

Publishing on git-scm is on my TODO list. It' s a bit more difficult
than updating the original manpages, because the translation process
with po4a cannot be done in memory, which does not fit with the way the
publishing is done directly from gitster/git repo on github into the
database, plus the underlying data structure of the website needs to
evolve to account for new languages (and Ruby on Rails is a special beast) .



> > > Are the translations contributed through >
https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/git-manpages/translations/ >
something that license-wise (Signed-off-by etc.) we'd eventually be >
able to upstream in git.git?
I retained the same license as Git for the translation repo, to prevent
future issues with integration of the result in other projects. Right
now, there's no Signed-off-by line in Weblate issued commits. I opened
an issue to have them added. Should this policy have been enforced from
the start or is it too late for later inclusion in git.git?


> > It would be great to eventually have something we can build as part >
of our build process, so e.g. Debian can have git-man-de similar to >
manpages-de now.
I don't understand you remark. The point of the proposed patch is to
allow to build and install the translated manpages from a working tree
of git, by adding a checkout of git-manpages-l10n in a subdir of
Documentation (note to self: propose a patch to document this). From
this setup, generating proper localized manpage packages is perfectly
doable. Am I missing anything?