Ubuntu 9.04 Translation Status
Posted by Adi | Filed under English, Planet Ubuntu
I’m updating the Ubuntu translations reports, I’ve done at the begining of the Ubuntu Jaunty release cycle.
I am aware that the translations work is done by volunteers by dedicating part of their precious time for translating free software. The goal of this report is not to blame the work of translators of Ubuntu localization team, but to offer an overview of the Ubuntu translation work.
Even though they are Ubuntu translations statistics, they reflect the status of free software translations for each language.
The information presented here is taken from Translation of Ubuntu Jaunty page from Launchpad.
All values are raw numbers and are not weighted by the number of people speaking that language or the number of people working at translating free software for that language.
Most contributors
This numbers represent the total number of translators working at this language, including current Ubuntu Translation team members, past members and people working outside Launchpad for upstream projects.
At some extent we can say that this numbers represent the number of free software translators for each language.
Here are no major changes since the of the start of the Jaunty release cycle.
French - 1010
Spanish - 885
Brazilian-Portuguese - 852
Here I would like to congratulate teams appointed for languages from the top.
Most complete translations
These values are the whole number of the remaining untranslated texts for all text in Jaunty main repoitory.
They are the complement values of translations done for the specific language, counting translations made using Launchpad Translations together with translations done outside Launchpad.
After finding out how many translators we have for each language, now we can see the degree of translation completeness.
We can see as well that the Spanish and Swedish languages are maintained by hard working translators.
Spanish - 14559
French - 45197
Swedish - 54349
I would like to congratulate all Swedish and Hungarian and Japanese translators!
Most translations that need review
These numbers represent the translations done in Launchpad but not reviewed by the translation teams appointed for each language. There are new translations or suggestions made by non team members or translations changed upstream.
Basically these number can reflect the degree of inactivity of an Ubuntu localization team, or the fact that translators are submitting bad translations.
They reflect the amount of lost, unused, futile work done for each language.
Spanish - 15352
Brazilian-Portuguese - 12805
Traditional-Chinese - 10876
If the big number is due to the fact that translators are submitting bad translations, the Ubuntu localization team should improve the communication with the translators and help them by providing guidelines, support and mentoring.
But iff those numbers represent on the other hand the amount of good translations waiting for someone to approve them, the Ubuntu localization team should increase the members in order to cover the required work.
As we all know all these teams are doing a great job and the numbers do not imply they are doing something bad. The numbers are just a signal that there is room for improvement.
I would like to congratulate the Ubuntu Simplified Chinese localization team for their hard work during Jaunty development.
Most differences from upstream
These values are the number of translations done in Launchpad and used by Ubuntu, but not shared with the upstream projects.
They reflect the degree of the collaboration of the Ubuntu team with other localization teams.
Spanish - 23404
Traditions-Chinese - 19235
Brazilian-Portuguese - 15689
One of the reason for being listed in the top of this list if the fact that translations for those languages are only available in Rosetta and were not commited in the source package/upstream project.
During the Jaunty development cycle the Romanian Ubuntu localization team has worked together with the GNOME translations team and now it is out of the top 10.
In order to improve its status in this area, the Ubuntu localization team should intensify the collaboration with upstream projects and allocate resources for making those translations available to everybody, not only for Ubuntu users.
July 16th, 2009 at 18:50
Very informative. Thanks, Adi!