[BSDCert] Reorganization of Translation Efforts

[Patrick Tracanelli]

Hello BSD Certification community and specially Translation Team Members,

I would like to start a conversation right now regarding the actual 
translation efforts and the way we do it.

In the last months there have been some changes regarding how the Web 
site is maintained. It became mostly static HTML files which are, for 
sure, easy to translate and deal with. Also, SVN access to change it has 
been put online. Thus, we have an opportunity to change how we used to 
work on translations.

Since the translation efforts started, I have noticed some difficult 
issues to deal with. The very first one is that sometimes the work 
depende don me somehow to happen. I am sure its possibly my fault show 
somehow, maybe centralized something. So, now we have a chance to change it.

I want to discuss with you how to make the translation work the most 
independant, allowing the groups to work however they wish, and at the 
sabe time granting the teams the necessary infra-structure to work and 
communicate.

Lets start with the points:

1 - Communication

We use today to have e-mail alias @bsdcertification.org which points to 
the team members. It has proven to be a bad approach. First, because as 
simple mail alias, we have few to no possibilities of customizations at 
all. Second because since today, SPF and Microsoft Sender-ID anti-spam 
stuff is becoming a defacto-stanrd but SRS is not, and relies on both, 
forwarder and receiver sides to have effect, working with mail aliases 
has failed completly.

Therefore what the BSDCG will provide to the teams, is a mailing list, 
running mailman. The team or someone (usually the founder, the first 
member of the group) will be provided with the password to admin that 
list of the group however they like to.

Any suggestions/comments about that approach?

2 - Team Leadership

How the teams will work, will be discussed and defined between the teams 
exclusively. Therefore, if at any event such as the need for better 
translation revisions, or introduction to new team members, etc, happens 
to need a local person to explain something, I would like to count on 
Team Leaders. Therefore I am not sure how we can determine this 
leadership. I expect people to raise hands and say "I can manager this 
group". I intend to be the contact between the BSDCG and the Teams. But 
regarding the team work I would preffer not envolving too much in their 
decisions.

I hope to hear suggestions about that too.

3 - Actually putting things "online"

I have to make it simple! Maybe SVN access would not be that simple, 
therefore someone has, in the past, suggested access to a DAV-enabled 
webserver where they could send things from. I personally believe that 
any approach will do. Both, DAV access as well as SVN access require 
some sort of extra knowledge. And both can be made even mor simple, say, 
adding SVN client applications (such as front-ends) and using some O.S. 
and GUI native support for DAV (such as the ones we find on Gnome, KDE, 
Mac OS X Leopard and Microsoft Windows), or even using 3rd party front 
ends such as `cadaver-front` or `sitecopy`.

If we deal with SVN access, we have do discuss if every team member 
should have their own username/password to access that directory they 
are working at, or if one only username per team will do.

If we choose DAV, the team will work in a development server, and 
periodically (crontab job), the stuff on the DAV directory will be 
commited to the subversion tree and later, become online. This is my 
idea to deal with that.

So, what would be easier and require the less extra learning from people 
who want only to translate things?

4 - Wiki

I intend to maintain the main Wiki instructions and teams will maintain 
how they wish to, their own Wiki pages in the Wiki site.

5 - Announcements

I intend to propose to the BSDCG to send the new announcements to the 
teams 48hrs before they get online, when possible, to allow it to be 
available in sync in many languages as we can. If the actual team 
members and community understand its important to have the announcement 
available in those languages in sync.

7 - Keeping Things Up-to-date

Who will be responsible to keep the localized site up-to-date? One would 
ask. Personally, the team is the only responsible ones I believe. 
Therefore I dont believe its a good idea to automatically "move" people 
to the localized site as well as they access the bsdcertification.org 
site, using the browser configuration or anything else to determine 
their language.

Instead, I believe that the best aprroach is to keep English always the 
default, and we add a drop-down <select> box on top of the site to allow 
people to go to the localized version.

8 - URL Scheming

Keep the ISO-CC (Contry Code) and add it as a directory or webserver 
Alias on the URL, so it can be directly accessed/linked etc, say:

http://www.bsdcertification.org/fr-fr
http://www.bsdcertification.org/de-de
http://www.bsdcertification.org/es-es
http://www.bsdcertification.org/pt-br
...

========================================================

I would like to hear suggestions and discuss with everyone about that, 
in this list. If someone have even more simple (but effective) 
approaches to suggest, please do.

I believe its time to allow translation teams to work more confortably.

-- 
Patrick Tracanelli

FreeBSD Brasil LTDA.
Tel.: (31) 3516-0800
316601 at sip.freebsdbrasil.com.br
http://www.freebsdbrasil.com.br
"Long live Hanin Elias, Kim Deal!"