Re: Translating Emacs manuals is of strategic importance

[Po Lu]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> It is exactly the opposite, in fact: you start with the small fry, and
> work your way up from there.
>
> Few people start a project like "let's translate the ELisp manual",
> whereas some might say something like "let's translate the ERT manual".
> Then they get confidence and move on to bigger tasks.

This places excessive weight on the abstract objective of promoting
users' self-assurance, in an area where we should instead be evaluating
immediate benefit.  Not to mention that potential contributors are
assuredly posessed of the confidence to embark on larger tasks such as
translating the user or Lisp reference manuals, as the translation I
linked earlier shows.

The danger in accepting such translations is not a potential shortage of
contributors _willing_ to take up their upkeep whom we might attract by
distributing them under our own seal of approval, it is the motivation
and ability of such contributors (many of whom have offered us their
services) to carry such tasks to completion.  Without this we will land
ourselves with a collection of incomplete manuals and accountability for
their faults, which will place yet more strain on an already-burdened
group of contributors, none of whom, I trust, can dedicate enough of
their time to maintaining such manuals in just the languages widely
spoken in technical circles (i.e. German, French, Russian, Hebrew), let
alone each and every language that might see interest expressed in being
the target of a translation of the Emacs manual, or that our users
speak.

> It would have been much better if that had already been copyright
> assigned to the FSF and merged into Emacs.

To me, it rather seems as though we would be better off _without_
overreaching ourselves by merging a partial translation that has not
seen activity in two years in the expectation of someone volunteering to
complete it.

> We don't need to "magically increase interest" for this work to be
> useful, however.  An outdated manual in a language you can read is
> infinitely more useful than a bleeding edge one in one that you can't.
> We just have to make sure to date it or say which version it covers.
>
> Furthermore, even a halfway house gives a starting point for someone to
> continue the work later.

There is nothing to suggest that users cannot locate an outdated or
incomplete manual over the Internet.  I don't dispute that they serve a
worthwhile (if not crucial) purpose, my reservations are that we should
not take _responsibility_ for them while being fully aware of factors
that make for a very real chance that they won't deliver.  Then if the
time comes when interest in them does increase such that it becomes
sound for us to assume that responsibility, we can always revisit any
decisions that might have been made up to that time.

> We have huge number of potential users that do not speak English
> fluently to the level where they're able to read our manuals.  Thus,
> translating manuals to other languages has strategic importance, if we
> want to promote Emacs and free software.

Nowhere did I deny this, but see below.

> Therefore, I think that we should not take a defeatist stance here.
> While we might currently lack the resources to lead the charge, we
> should not discourage people interested in doing the work.  On the
> contrary.

Being realistic in our estimate of our own capabilities is not
defeatism, nor is requesting that interested participants stage their
work separately discouraging, which incidentally won't preclude
obtaining copyright assignment for such work should it ever come to
that.

TIA.