Re: Translating the Emacs manuals (a summary)

[Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traductaire-libre.org>]

> On Jan 22, 2024, at 12:33, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
> These notes seem basically good, but I think an item should be added
> to address the issue of following the GNU Free Documentation License.

The revision I sent as a patch yesterday includes this:

---
## Copyright assignment

People who contribute translated documents should provide a copyright
assignment to the Free Software Foundation. See the 'Copyright
Assignment' section in the Emacs manual.


## Translated documents licence

The translated documents are distributed under the same licence as the
original documents: the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html for more information.
---

Is that sufficient?

> There are two points I suggest changing.
> 
>> During the course of the translation, you will find parts of the
>> original document that needs to be updated or otherwise fixed. If
>> you do not intend to modify the original documents right away, do
>> not add notes to the original documents but rather keep such notes
>> inside your translation as TODO items until you action them.
> 
> That is not what we want to recommend.  Keeping a private note about a
> problem you spotted does not lead to fixing it soon.
> 
> Instead, please advise translators, "Uf you find a problem in a file
> in the Emacs distribution, including in a manual, please file a bug
> report promply so someone can fix it soon."

I changed the item to this:

---
## Fixing the original document

During the course of the translation, you might find parts of the
original document that need to be updated or otherwise fixed, or even
bugs in Emacs. If you do not intend to provide fixes right away,
please file a bug report promptly so someone can fix it soon.

See the 'Bugs' section in the Emacs manual.
---

Is that what you had in mind?

>> Although the PO format has not been developed with documentation
>> in mind, it is well known among free software translation teams
>> and you can easily use the ’po4a’ utility to convert TexInfo to PO
>> for work in translation tools that support the PO format.
> 
> Please suggest that people look at the subdirectories of www.gnu.org,
> for instance www.gnu.org/philosophy, to see the way the translators of
> the web site use PO to help them do it.  The master version of each
> page is in English and does not have PO markup; however, the
> translators maintain a PO-annotated version of each page.

To also answer your:

> I suggest it would be a good idea to put manual translators
> in touch with the language's translation team.


I modified the Translation teams section this way:

---
## Translation teams

The number of words in the Emacs manuals is above 2,000,000 words and
growing. While one individual could theoretically translate all the
files, it is more practical to work in language teams.

If you have a small group of translators willing to help, make sure
that the files are properly reviewed before sending them to
emacs-devel (see above).

Although the Emacs manuals translation is not yet formally integrated
with the rest of the GNU Project translation project, you are invited
to refer to the translation-related documents that the GNU Project
maintains and to get in touch with your language's translation team.

See https://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.translations.html for
more information.
---

Is it satisfactory?

I'll send a new patch when I have your green light.