Some days I feel super lazy but I still would like to go on contributing translations to Debian.
Then, I leave the web translations a bit, and change to translate or review Debian package descriptions.
It’s something that anybody can do without any knowledge of translation tools, since it is a very simple web interface, as you will see.
First you need to create a login account, then, login into the system.
And then, go to the page of your mother language (in my case, Spanish, “es”). You will see some introductory text, and the list of pending translations:
At the end of the page, there is the list of translations pending to review:
We should begin with this, so the work that other people already made arrives quickly its destination. And it’s the easiest part, as you will see. Let’s pick one of them (libvformat1-dev):
You see the short description in the original English, and the current translation (if there were changes from a former version, they are coloured too).
I didn’t know what the package libvformat1-dev does, but here’s a nice opportunity to learn aobut it a bit 🙂
The short description looks ok for me. Let’s go on to the long description:
It also looks correct for me. So I leave the text box as is, and go on until the bottom of the page:
and click “Accept as is”. That’s all!!
The system brings you back to the page with pending translations and reviews. Let’s pick another one: totem
I found a typo and corrected some other words, so I updated the text in the translation box, left a message to the other translators in the comment box, and clicked “Accept with changes”.
And… iterate.
When 3 translators agree in a translation, it becomes official, and its propagated to apt-cache, aptitude, synaptic, etc., and the website (packages.debian.org). This is the most difficult part (to get 3 reviews for each package description): many language teams are small, and their workforce is spread in many fronts: translations for the website, news and announcements, debconf templates (the messages that are shown to the user when a package is installed), the Debian installer, the documentation, the package descriptions… So your help (even when you only review some translations from time to time) will be appreciated, for sure.
Comments?
You can comment in this pump.io thread.
The bright side 