Re: [Duplicity-talk] Translations

[Michael Terry]

On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Dan Muresan <address@hidden> wrote:
> I haven't worked much with translations, so I'm curious: besides the
> one-time cost of i18n-ing a program, isn't there also a permanent
> maintenance cost? Every time you need to add a new message, all
> translations need to be updated, right? What happens if nobody
> volunteers to update a particular translation?

Yeah, there's a bit.  With autotools, the work of updating the
translations is automatic.  I don't know how well integrated
translations are with Python's setup.py system.  I'm sure at least
somewhat, to be competitive.

As for translating new strings as they happen, the string will remain
in English until someone translates it.

But there is a bit of bother for the maintainer.  Everytime you add a
new source file, you need to add it to a list of files to be
translated.  You need to remember to mark your strings that should be
translated.  Usually by writing them like _("test") instead of just
"test".  And you need to remember to push your new translation
templates and download the finished translations.  When you download a
translation you didn't have before, you need to add it to a file.

With the easiest workflow service I know (the Translation Project),
pushing new translation templates means emailing the TP with the url
of a .tar.gz you've released.  Downloading the translations is as easy
as running an rsync command.

Which is all to say, yes, there's an ongoing maintainence cost.  Which
isn't fun.  But you get translations!

-mt