Translation of the Org mode manual (was: Translation of manuals (was: SES manual French translation))

[Ihor Radchenko]

Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traductaire-libre.org>
writes:
> I’m not sure this is the place to discuss translation theory...

Let me steer this discussion to non-texi manuals - Org mode manual.
We also had a few requests about translations, although Org mode needs
are more general compared to a very focused task of translating texi
manuals:

1. Org mode manual itself, just like the other Emacs manuals may need to
   be translated. However, Org mode manual source is written in Org mode
   format, not texi. It is just transformed to texi as one of the export
   options.

2. Org mode website has several translations (French, Japanese, and
   Mandarin). The website sources are written in Org mode, but the work
   of translation was done be enthusiasts, and we have no good system to
   maintain the main English version of the website in sync with the
   translations.

3. A number of Org mode users are using Org sources to publish
   multi-lingual books. Such publishing is a bit more challenging
   compared to translation as it requires special book layout.

Therefore, there is a demand to have a toolset for translating Org mode
documents.

So far, I have been thinking about some way to support translations with
ideas rather similar to raised in this topic:

1. Mark paragraphs/headings/other structural elements with an ID

2. Split translation into chunks linked to the original source IDs and
   their text hash

3. When exporting from Org source to target format (texi, html, pdf,
   etc), allow choosing the target language(s) and ensure consistency
   between translations and their possibly changed sources.

However, I did not know about po4a. It is possible that many of the
necessary design decisions are already in place in po4a.

> ...
> I think po-mode already does that and all the "out of emacs" tools do 
> too.

May you share the most important features of po-mode that you find
essential to your translation work?

>> @node Display Margins
>>  @subsection Displaying in the Margins
>>  @cindex display margins
>>  @cindex margins, display
>
> As long as the above strings are to be translated, they need an ID too.
>
>>  @c para 1234
>> 
>>  @c para 1235
>> 
>>  @c para 1236
>
> Is the numbering automatic?
>
> What if you add paragraphs in the middle, like Vincent did? Will the 
> author have to check the IDs and add a number that’s not used already?
>
> There are plenty of issues with static IDing parts of a document.

May you please elaborate on the issues with static IDs?

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>