[asterisk-dev] [policy] Language specific prompts

[David Chappell]

Russell Bryant writes:
> On Feb 6, 2009, at 11:57 AM, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
>
>   
>> I am proposing, as a matter of policy, that anybody wishing to make  
>> ANY
>> change whatsoever to multi-language support, that they should have  
>> to document
>> every single prompt in that native language, in a fashion that is  
>> identical to
>> the Hebrew document (which may be found in doc/lang/).
>>     
>
>
> I do not have a problem with this from a high level.  However, I would  
> like to suggest a different approach to getting this documentation  
> generated.
>
> I really do not want to rely on waiting for someone to show up who is  
> just trying to help the project by reporting a bug to then ask them to  
> undergo a large undertaking to get the problem fixed.  It's likely it  
> will just scare people off.
>
> Instead, we should probably take a more proactive approach by  
> requesting help on the mailing lists to get a group of community  
> members looking for a way to help involved in getting this  
> documentation generated.
>   
I too see potential problems with this approach:

1) The programmer who implements support for a language's grammer may 
not be qualified to do the translation.  For example, I speak Russian.  
I fixed vm_intro() so that it says "you have five messages" correctly in 
Russian.  I also fixed it for Ukrainian (a similar language which I 
mostly understand, but cannot speak) after asking a native speaker to 
verify that the conjugation rules for this phrase are the same.  I 
intend to produce the spreadsheet for Russian, but could not possibly 
produce it for Ukrainian.

2) The person making the change may not have the knowledge necessary to 
translate all of the prompts.  In order to translate the prompts, the 
translator _must_ understand the context in which they will used.  I can 
translate the app_voicemail prompts into Russian because I use voicemail 
and know what is meant.  I could not translate the app_queue prompts 
because, though I understand its purpose, I have never used it and hence 
do not know how it actually operates.

3) We do not yet have versions of this spreadsheet for the default 
languages (English, Spanish, French) included with Asterisk.  Despite 
what I said above about how one cannot simply translate the English 
phrases, the do at least serve as a reminder of what the prompt should 
contain.

Therefor, I suggest:

1) That a spreadsheet for English be produced as a model.
2) That the programmers be asked to produce translations only for 
languages which he speaks.
3) That the qualified programmer be asked to provide translations only 
for those prompts which are used by the module which he changed.