Re: [Enigma-devel] Scottish Gaelic translation

[Erich Schubert]

Hello,
No, the Debian/Ubuntu packages contain distribution specific changes
that aren't committed to trunk.
(And I don't have write access to enigma trunk anyway; I'm happy with
sharing the one patch a year by email.)

In particular the language choosing bug is only a "hotfix", a hack
that needs to be solved more cleanly.
It might break Windows when applied, so it's not ready for trunk.

Regards,
Erich

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Fòram na Gàidhlig
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Sorry, something must have been wrong in the settings so this didn't go to
> the list.
>
> First of all, thank you for your fast reply.
>
> I do have a partner in crime who could take over if I get run over by a bus.
> Check his homepage: http://www.igaidhlig.net/
>
> If we should be unable to support the translation anymore, say 20 years in
> the future, you could always remove the translation then. Also, a bomb might
> drop on the key developers and stop all improvements to the code, so let's
> just give up coding anything for this game right now, shall we?
>
> Frankly, this is the first time I have run into this kind of rejection from
> a FOSS project. Or should I use a stronger word, be somewhat dramatic and
> say discrimination?
>
> I apologize for my sarcasm, but I didn't expect to have to tilt at windmills
> for this - minority languages have to tilt at too many of them as it is. I
> also know that you meant no offense, but with issues like this it is hard
> for me to keep my cool. I guess most majority language speakers have no idea
> what it feels like, and why should they ;)
>
>
> As to the problem with switching languages, I built this from trunk today:
>
> svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/enigma-game/source/trunk
>
> Shouldn't the fixes that have been done for the latest packages also be in
> trunk?
>
>
>
> 20/02/2014 10:21, sgrìobh Erich Schubert:
>
>> Hello,
>> Please send your mail to the list, if you want everybody to read it...
>>
>> I don't doubt that you can translate it.
>> The concern is that in 2 years, for some future version of enigma, you
>> may be gone, and nobody updates the translation anymore.
>> It's about the *pool size* of possible translators. You may be very
>> dedicated, but who is your backup?
>>
>> Switching languages on Linux often does not work (see the bug reports
>> in Debian, Ubuntu; fixed in the latest package, as well as mails here
>> on the list this year).
>> The reason is that the locales are usually named "de_DE.UTF-8" on
>> Linux, and the UI tries to choose "de_DE", which would be the old,
>> non-UTF-8-locale (and may not be available on the system at all).
>>
>> Regards,
>> Erich
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Fòram na Gàidhlig
>> <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, although it does help to have a big translation team, the success
>>> of a
>>> translation does not depend on the number of its speakers, but on the
>>> dedication of its translators. If you dont think I can do it, have a look
>>> at
>>> my portfolio ;)
>>>
>>> http://www.foramnagaidhlig.net/index.php?sid=&page=148
>>>
>>> I translated all those games except for Freeciv and Scrabble 3D, and I
>>> have
>>> a few more projects in the works that are waiting for release.
>>>
>>> The most important thing is to get the interface done, then I will slowly
>>> work my way through the levels. On OpenTTD, they have a minimum of
>>> phrases
>>> that need to be done before a translation is officially included. Maybe
>>> this
>>> would be a better criterion than the number of speakers? With Enigma, the
>>> difficulty with that is at the moment that the language data are in a
>>> source
>>> code file rather than a config file, so translators of languages that
>>> aren't
>>> official included need to be able to compile the project before they can
>>
>>
>>> test their translation.
>>>
>>> I have compiled in Ubuntu from trunk, but changing to a different
>>> language
>>> does not work. The setting changes in the options menu and is remembered,
>>> but the interface language stays in English. Is this a new bug you're
>>> struggling with?
>>>
>>>
>>> If puzzles contain puns, the best thing to go would be to include a
>>> comment
>>> in the .pot file for the translators. When translators know, they can get
>>> creative. If it doesn't work in their language, they can leave it in
>>> English. The existence of one untranslatable level shouldn't keep us from
>>> translating all the rest.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 20/02/2014 08:17, sgrìobh Erich Schubert:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> Maybe such languages can be distributed as add-on packages?
>>>> Shouldn't be much more than a flag and the translation file; albeit it
>>>> might be tricky to get gettext to find the file then.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, this would allow translations for smaller languages to be
>>>> asynchronously updated (or not updated). The web site could then list
>>>> them per version; and it would allow a translator to step up and
>>>> contribute a translation later.
>>>>
>>>> Also note that translations of Enigma sometimes cannot or should not
>>>> be made automatically. There are some puzzles based on language;
>>>> translating them will make the level unsolvable, unfortunately. See
>>>> "the document" in Enigma I for an example. (Spoilers on the problem:
>>>> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=546795 )
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure how to best handle such cases. Mark the level
>>>> untranslatable explicitly / require the translation to be done
>>>> manually inside the level file?
>>>> (I havn't checked if this problem has been addressed for this
>>>> particular level already.)
>>>>
>>>> Speaking of translations; the enigma.desktop file (Freedesktop menu
>>>> entry for Linux systems) should also be translated:
>>>> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=667656
>>>>
>>>> There are tools that will include the .desktop strings in the
>>>> translation data and update the .desktop at compile time with the
>>>> translations. This is why I did not want to manually include single
>>>> translations in the .desktop file, when the process should be
>>>> automated for translator convenience.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Erich
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Andreas Lochmann
>>>> <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> thank you for your support.
>>>>> But I have to admit that I'm sceptical.
>>>>> Let me explain:
>>>>> The language with the least number of native
>>>>> speakers we currently support is Belarussian
>>>>> with approximately 3,700,000 speakers.
>>>>> If the numbers in Wikipedia are correct,
>>>>> Scottish Gaelic is natively spoken by 63,000
>>>>> people, right?
>>>>>
>>>>> The problem is not in the number of speakers.
>>>>> Actually, the problem is in the number of
>>>>> potential translators. In contrast to most
>>>>> other projects, Enigma's translations are vast
>>>>> and ever-growing, as the number of levels
>>>>> steadily grows. There is no end on the effort.
>>>>> In languages with many speakers, there are
>>>>> many people who can continue with the
>>>>> translation in case the original translator
>>>>> cannot continue her work. In Scottish Gaelic,
>>>>> you and maybe Yannis will be the only ones
>>>>> who can do the translation. It will be a task
>>>>> for a life-time for you. Are you really willing
>>>>> to accept this burden?
>>>>>
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> Andreas
>>>>>
>>>>> (I wanted to use a Gaelic "best regards",
>>>>> but Google Translator does not support
>>>>> it ... what is it in Scottish Gaelic? :-)  )
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Am 17.02.2014 23:33, schrieb Fòram na Gàidhlig:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'd like to start working my way through translating this excellent
>>>>>> game into Scottish Gaelic :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The locale is gd or gd_GB, encoding UTF-8.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have already sent a request to be added to the Transifex project.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The flag would usually be the Scottish flag, but we will have a
>>>>>> problem there if somebody should want to translate the game into Scots
>>>>>> in the future, because it's the same flag (Scotland is a multilingual
>>
>>
>>>>>> country). We could use this one though:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://labspace.open.ac.uk/file.php/7437/!via/oucontent/course/3639/gaelic_1_flag.jpg
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> which is the symbol of the Gaelic community in Nova Scotia.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers
>>>>>>
>>>>>> GunChleoc
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>> address@hidden
>>>>>> https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/enigma-devel
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/enigma-devel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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-- 

best regards,
Erich Schubert