Re: [PATCH] Chinese translation of Documentation/HOWTO

[Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>]

Dear Linus: you aren't at Transmeta anymore.  Here's a second attempt to cc: 
you on this because I need your opinion on a documentation issue:

On Thursday 21 June 2007 22:48:32 Rob Landley wrote:
> On Thursday 21 June 2007 10:40:17 Li Yang wrote:
> > This is a Chinese translated version of Documentation/HOWTO.  Currently
> > Chinese involvement in Linux kernel is very low, especially comparing to
> > its largest population base.  Language could be the main obstacle.  Hope
> > this document will help more Chinese to contribute to Linux kernel.
>
> I'm putting together a kernel documentation directory at
> http://kernel.org/doc and I could easily add translations in there.  I just
> don't know if this is a good idea.
>
> The problem is, the submission of patches happens on the various kernel.org
> mailing lists, which are all in English.  Kernel development is done in a
> single common language: English.  (If you'd like to argue for it to be done
> in another language, please make the proposal in Linus's native Swedish.)
>
> Setting aside for the moment version skew and coverage issues when
> translating Documentation, which aren't really serious blocking issues, my
> question is this:  If developers aren't fluent enough with English to
> follow the documentation, how can they follow any of the technical
> discussions necessary to merge their patches back into the mainstream
> kernel?  Doesn't this encourage the creation of patches that can't easily
> be merged back into the kernel?
>
> It could be that the answer is "no, it's fine".  I don't feel qualified to
> make this decision.  It's very easy for me to accept contributed
> translations and put them up, but I'd like some kind of consensus from the
> kernel developers that I SHOULD do this.  How much use is a Chinese version
> of a HOWTO that tells people how to interact with an English community?
>
> Could somebody more qualified than me speak up on this one so I know what
> to do?
>
> Rob
>
> P.S.  I meant to comment when this topic first came up last week
> [http://kerneltrap.org/node/8365] but my laptop's hard drive died and I
> lost the link.  (Along with any chance of this being a particularly
> productive month for me...)



-- 
"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code."
  - Ken Thompson.