RE: Emacs user manual in Spanish

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> Manuals are very tricky if they should be
> translated or not.
> 
> In a perfect world the Emacs techno-science
> conglomerate would hire professional tech
> translators to get the job done.
> 
> However, in the imperfect anomaly which is the
> current realm, those efforts are put on
> enthusiasts that often underestimate the effort
> and time to do a complete, proofread
> translation. And when it comes to a manual, an
> incomplete one may often be an injustice.

An incomplete - or badly translated - manual might
be an injustice.  But it might still be useful.
And an incomplete manual is not necessarily an injustice.

Not really wanting to get into this discussion (in
particular, I know nothing about it), here is a
comment anyway.

Rather than viewing that task as all-or-nothing:
(1) translate an entire manual and (2) keep it
up-to-date, perhaps an incremental, informal,
contributor-best-effort approach could be taken.

That's how it works on Emacs Wiki, for example.
Users interested in translating a given wiki page
do so.  They need not be interested, qualified, or
have the time to translate other pages.  Every
contribution can help.  And others can then update
pages or fix both technical and translation bugs.

Perhaps the HTML GNU Emacs manuals could offer a
similar possibility: Allow for anyone to translate
a given section into a given language, or update
such a translated section.

There could also be a "locked" version of such a
page, which is deemed pretty good at some point and
serves as an informal reference, while an unlocked,
"sandbox" version is open for anyone to improve upon.

This wouldn't preclude any systematic, thorough
translation effort.  It would offer something less
but easier for people to contribute to.  GNU would
not need to swear by the authority or authenticity
of such doc.  But it could still be quite helpful.

Presumably anyone could already work on this, just
by creating Emacs-Wiki pages that are translations
of manual sections.  IOW, it wouldn't even need to
be hosted by GNU.  Dunno whether there are copyright
considerations that get in the way in that case,
however.

Just an idea.