Re: Translating the Emacs manuals (a summary)

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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These notes seem basically good, but I think an item should be added
to address the issue of following the GNU Free Documentation License.

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."

  > 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.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)