Re: Translating Emacs manuals is of strategic importance

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2024 15:20:49 +0000
> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traductaire-libre.org>
> Cc: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>, Vincent Belaïche 
> <vincent.b.1@hotmail.fr>, emacs-devel@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org
> 
> >> Emacs is *the* free software movement flagship. There is no equivalent
> >> in the history of the movement. Still, it is the one that has
> >> historically shown the least interest in, or practical commitment to,
> >> translation and localization.
> > 
> > This is at least inaccurate, and quite a bit unfair, I must say.  The
> > fact that Emacs does not yet support localized translated messages is
> > correct, of course, but explaining that by lack of interest and
> > practical commitment is not.  I think even the response of the
> > maintainers to Vincent's submission speaks volumes about the level of
> > our interest and commitment.
> 
> The proof is in the pudding. In 40 years, the Emacs project has yet to 
> publish an up-to-date manual in a non-English language.
> 
> It’s a fact. And I understand that it comes from the community at large 
> not being interested in that aspect of Emacs.

I don't argue with facts.  My response was to the apparent denigration
of the project and its leadership based on incorrect interpretation of
the reasons which led to the fact.

> But there are groups that worked on a Japanese manual if my memory is 
> correct. There is mention of a Chinese manual, I know of the French 
> attempt at working on the manuals 20 years ago, and there are probably 
> many other language groups that tried too.
> 
> Where the people too shy to ask if their work could be included? Maybe. 
> Was the “English is the language of computer development” general 
> stance detrimental to considering these efforts as valuable then? I’d 
> think that yes.

I don't remember anyone suggesting to add a translated manual and
being rejected.  Did something like that actually happen?  If so, can
you point to the relevant discussion?

> > Silly things people sometimes say here aside (and everyone who reads
> > this list should be able to distinguish between wrong or even silly
> > opinions of some and the official POV of the Emacs maintainers), the
> > projects that have translations all do it using gettext and the
> > related infrastructure.  All they need is to wrap strings in the
> > various printf's with _(), and the rest is a matter of having a
> > message catalog translated to the target language.  So it is quite
> > simple for those programs to provide localized messages.
> 
> We are really talking manuals here. Not message strings.

Your original message indicated otherwise.  You talked about other
projects that have translations of high quality, and the "sad state"
of Emacs by comparison.  I can only understand this if you are
alluding to message catalogs.  Because if you are talking about
translations of the manuals, then please name free software projects
that have high-quality translations of their manuals, and the manuals
are of sufficient size to consider them anywhere near what Emacs has
to deal with.

If we limit this discussion to manuals, I submit that Emacs as a
project has nothing to be ashamed of.  We have tutorial translations
into 2 dozen languages, and we have refcards translations into 5
languages.  What other GNU projects can boast that?

> man pages are translated. Web pages are translated. DocBook or other 
> documentation is translated. Etc. There are millions of words in 
> various documentation formats that are translated to dozens of 
> languages in the free software world.

Not in my experience, not in the GNU Project anyway.

> > Nothing is farther from the truth.  There was no need to "stir the
> > pot": as soon as Vincent came up with his translation, he was
> > immediately asked whether adding that to Emacs would be possible.
> > That alone should speak volumes of the attitude of the current (and
> > past) maintainers wrt making Emacs friendlier to people whose first
> > language is not English.
> 
> Maybe stirring the pot was not the appropriate expression and I am not 
> criticizing maintainers at all. What is happening now is a very 
> constructive discussion on how to move forward regarding translations. 
> 
> That has never happened in the past (as far as I remember, and checked 
> in the archives), and I think that it is thanks to Vincent moving 
> forward and committing his manual to a place that did not exist 
> before.

It never happened in the past because no one submitted a translated
manual for inclusion.  We try not to discuss theoretical problems, I'm
sure you understand.

> > It is unreasonable
> > to expect the Emacs project to solve problems that are common to all
> > the GNU projects, and accuse us of lack of interest because those
> > problems are not yet solved satisfactorily.
> 
> I’m not sure where that comes from.

It comes from your apparent expectations that we solve the non-trivial
issues on our own and "yesterday", when all we have is a single
translation of a single manual.  This stuff takes time, so please be
patient and let us find the right tools and ways of dealing with this
as we go.  What you see now is as it is because we had no translations
to work with.  It's too early to raise complaints about this.

> But I’m not sure it is fair to expect translators to wait until 
> somebody comes up with a “globally satisfactory solution to problems 
> common to all the GNU projects”, whatever that means in practice.

They don't need to.  Each and every translated manual that is
submitted to us will be added, no questions asked.  Like it happened
with Vincent's translation.

> > See above: the existing communities don't need to solve the problems
> > that are central to Emacs in this area, they don't even come close.
> 
> I’m still not sure how documentation translation is so much harder to 
> handle for Emacs than for other projects. Texi is just another plain text 
> format that has nothing special to it.

I wasn't talking about the manuals.  But even for the manuals there
are some issues that need to be considered.  For example: what do we
do with the info/dir file for these translated manuals? what should be
@dircategory for them -- should it be a separate category, like
"Translated manuals", or should it be the same as in the original
English manuals?