Re: Translating Emacs manuals is of strategic importance

[Po Lu]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> Thanks for voicing your concerns.  I think I see now where you are
> coming from.
>
> I understand your concern about not distributing and promoting something
> half-baked.  I myself have had some serious concerns about the quality
> of translations in Free Software, and I have voiced those concerns here
> in the past.  It would even be fair to say that I myself have taken a
> defeatist stance at times.
>
> Still, I note that many people are happy to be using the translations
> that exist, and consider that better than reading English.  This
> observation, and thinking about this more strategically from the point
> of view of promoting GNU and Emacs, has lead me to revise my stance.
>
> With more users will also come people interested in contributing.  If we
> have nothing at all, on the other hand, it is not so easy to see how to
> get the ball rolling.
>
> I also note that for French, we already have a professional translator
> on board (Jean-Christophe).  We can attract others in the future.  And
> Vincent has volunteered time to this as well, of course.

Are Jean-Christophe and Vincent capable of translating the Emacs user
manual and maintaining it in an up-to-date condition, both now and a
decade in the future, and would such efforts of theirs be impaired in
any manner if they took place outside the Emacs repository, under their
own supervision?

> I believe that we can get around the public perception issue by having
> the work principally take place on master, but without distributing
> unfinished translations in the release tarball.  This was the intention
> when I proposed having a "nursery" for translations that aren't yet
> complete.
>
> There is also _no_rush_ with marking a translation as finished.  If it
> takes a decade or two, then so be it.  Emacs is not going away, and
> neither are the fact that humans use different languages.  It won't be
> worse than the current situation; I think it will be better in many
> ways.
>
> I'm still interested in knowing if anyone sees any serious issues with
> the basic idea of keeping a nursery.  The exact details would have to be
> worked out, of course, including what we call it.

My position is not motivated by concern for our image, in large part,
but is one of clearly defining the extent of our responsibilities.  Just
as we are not responsible for packages in NonGNU ELPA, beyond trivial
house-keeping work related to their packaging, so we need not take
charge of translations, which, much like packages, users can make use of
whether developed as part of Emacs or not.

In addition the argument against including packages in the repository
applies far more to translations than to packages, as such translations
are not indispensable for our users or ever possible to complete,
because they are derivatives of source material that is constantly
undergoing modification.

> I know that you disagree, but _if_ we were to develop translations of
> on master, how would you propose going about it?

I don't know.  As I said, I consider the idea of developing them under
the Emacs umbrella fundamentally flawed given the resources at our
disposal.

> It is clear that we don't want to distribute and/or promote manuals that
> are not yet finished.

As harsh as this might sound, translation our manuals will be no more
challenging if we leave translators to "fend for themselves" and
maintain them separately, than if they conduct the work within our
repository without assistance that would place an unacceptable burden on
us.