From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from complex.crustytoothpaste.net (complex.crustytoothpaste.net [172.105.7.114]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5595A28BAB9 for ; Thu, 5 Feb 2026 01:53:59 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=172.105.7.114 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1770256439; cv=none; b=jQ2Jp9n7XctopsOCBKce8EZcRCYDAlCyQGzcuW4lZS2fzBpgwC+NXX8Lp/sGTI/MXPhNXfVsNxoaH14WuvJH2se6ywNlU9IXMI3L3bUE3R3KzamBN3Y5RPWH/YlW4ltlURoplDR4+ZZmklzG8D17ayEpH7XCSM8+huFZJ3XXjIU= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1770256439; c=relaxed/simple; bh=RSxCylwNPhI1LLzuaJgxm02ykNkBZ0vL2ayMifWkaTw=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:Message-ID:References:MIME-Version: Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To; b=Zu/Ddc26veBm54W0FyEdkF7rTlbGb/MbQu/slFtxQ1Orfa0QHnl4AWm9xzzmqu9urIhHmt1d0krN+pTbgQ+DMAIhFz9kO5JjVA1idw3Yn0GuByTXubFnV8qLhkxb+QzoERZMs58cH7G2j9VIb1ztRzg7aCKthA5Cp0FrSZXt8Qs= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=crustytoothpaste.net; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=crustytoothpaste.net; dkim=pass (3072-bit key) header.d=crustytoothpaste.net header.i=@crustytoothpaste.net header.b=qK35BxMK; arc=none smtp.client-ip=172.105.7.114 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=crustytoothpaste.net Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=crustytoothpaste.net Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (3072-bit key) header.d=crustytoothpaste.net header.i=@crustytoothpaste.net header.b="qK35BxMK" DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=crustytoothpaste.net; s=default; t=1770256437; bh=RSxCylwNPhI1LLzuaJgxm02ykNkBZ0vL2ayMifWkaTw=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:Content-Type: Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To:From:Reply-To:Subject:Date:To:CC: Resent-Date:Resent-From:Resent-To:Resent-Cc:In-Reply-To:References: Content-Type:Content-Disposition; b=qK35BxMK2tPUXlJKww+BvRsZ9fbq+v4/hBmLgKVHJbmhjGxeXkds64TDVxaJJ1+D1 hpDo4MJp01gXhP2nNk7y7yLbGbDS/wLIB30NjfhUbmV9u93Ui5z0Kq3RVlw0qjj5me qHZDhYFVdx/z3V5B54LUHZgLAK72DC5RRwDzQVIcjyHR1t/4vTU1/S+vggBrT1PHzW pJXJbl+YitaxsHziYGSXMo/ryi7auT8ppWzVUdj278OcKirj9BIFS3jATnoGHqPYHV NN7LuwpOFTGm7A5bOI25QfASCcU1JSkc2adZkle/5MNq4rFvRH9VQYKrYaVuvJnfr3 XA3zfle5flKY7XUhgt+6Zgzi3Km9nrLZc5t2CnbCNOuYy8wspfI3mkUpFi0+bD0t+r efpUJf8hNG7XPRaX+U93reZSoqRnHrsE8Vv2vhNe+QY/Wy356wmWzQtL740IzF6Xca L7uK93ND0R/FC/t6M61yaRj9HnEpNwswiHwHexSAZ4AuboUpjID Received: from fruit.crustytoothpaste.net (unknown [IPv6:2607:f2c0:f00f:f901:139e:b5f:f1d6:55e9]) (using TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256/256 bits) key-exchange ECDHE (prime256v1) server-signature ECDSA (prime256v1) server-digest SHA256) (No client certificate requested) by complex.crustytoothpaste.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id D2641200B0; Thu, 5 Feb 2026 01:53:57 +0000 (UTC) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2026 01:53:56 +0000 From: "brian m. carlson" To: Jiang Xin Cc: Peter Krefting , Alexander Shopov , Mikel Forcada , Ralf Thielow , =?utf-8?Q?Jean-No=C3=ABl?= Avila , Bagas Sanjaya , Dimitriy Ryazantcev , Emir SARI , Arkadii Yakovets , =?utf-8?B?VsWpIFRp4bq/biBIxrBuZw==?= , Teng Long , Yi-Jyun Pan , Jordi Mas , Matthias =?utf-8?Q?R=C3=BCster?= , Phillip Szelat , =?utf-8?Q?S=C3=A9bastien?= Helleu , insolor , Kateryna Golovanova , =?utf-8?B?VHLhuqduIE5n4buNYyBRdcOibg==?= , =?utf-8?B?Tmd1eeG7hW4gVGjDoWkgTmfhu41j?= Duy , Ray Chen , =?utf-8?B?5L6d5LqR?= , Fangyi Zhou , Franklin Weng , Git List Subject: Re: [RFC] Introducing AI Agents to Git Localization Message-ID: Mail-Followup-To: "brian m. carlson" , Jiang Xin , Peter Krefting , Alexander Shopov , Mikel Forcada , Ralf Thielow , =?utf-8?Q?Jean-No=C3=ABl?= Avila , Bagas Sanjaya , Dimitriy Ryazantcev , Emir SARI , Arkadii Yakovets , =?utf-8?B?VsWpIFRp4bq/biBIxrBuZw==?= , Teng Long , Yi-Jyun Pan , Jordi Mas , Matthias =?utf-8?Q?R=C3=BCster?= , Phillip Szelat , =?utf-8?Q?S=C3=A9bastien?= Helleu , insolor , Kateryna Golovanova , =?utf-8?B?VHLhuqduIE5n4buNYyBRdcOibg==?= , =?utf-8?B?Tmd1eeG7hW4gVGjDoWkgTmfhu41j?= Duy , Ray Chen , =?utf-8?B?5L6d5LqR?= , Fangyi Zhou , Franklin Weng , Git List References: <534b9313b19a73bcee6e0ac1d7299e19@softwolves.pp.se> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="4PwoEpAHHRJWPPRK" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/2.2.13 (2024-03-09) --4PwoEpAHHRJWPPRK Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2026-02-05 at 01:04:51, Jiang Xin wrote: > To clarify, the intention is not to enforce automated translations via > a central bot. Instead, each l10n team should retain full control over > whether or not to use AI assistance in their workflow. The recent > commits in the git-po next branch only add optional guidance in > po/README.md to help AI agents (if a team chooses to use them) perform > specific tasks more effectively=E2=80=94such as recognizing glossary terms > from the .po header, locating untranslated or fuzzy strings, and > splitting large files for easier handling. >=20 > We fully acknowledge that AI translation quality varies significantly > across languages, and for some=E2=80=94like Swedish=E2=80=94it may not ye= t be reliable > enough for direct use. The goal is to provide tools that teams can > optionally leverage, not to replace human judgment or community > oversight. My experience in seeing AI translations is that they tend to be of poor quality. Certainly, I'm only a native speaker of English, but my reading and writing skills in Spanish and French are somewhere around B2 or C1 and I've seen some AI translations that are frankly just wrong, making errors that no human would ever make. And Spanish and French are two of the most spoken languages on the planet, with hundreds of millions of speakers each. I also will share with you the experience of a colleague of mine who is a European Portuguese speaker. Most of the AI models produce Brazilian Portuguese, which is much more common (since there are more people in Brazil than in Portugal), but can vary substantially from European Portuguese. (Most FLOSS I've seen has separate pt_BR and pt_PT translations for this reason.) This means that these tools are going to produce bad translations in such a case. I strongly feel that we should provide people good quality software, which includes good quality translations, to the best of our ability. I realize that this demands extra effort from humans to do good quality translations, but I feel really positively about the quality of the translations we have in Git: they are overall excellent and it is only extremely infrequently that I've found a problem (which is usually a typo of some sort that anyone could have made). Considering that most people on the planet do not speak English and that even those that do may not speak it fluently, it's of the utmost importance that we produce the best quality translations we can. I don't feel using AI-generated translations would be honouring our users in that way. Finally, we have this text in SubmittingPatches: The Developer's Certificate of Origin requires contributors to certify that they know the origin of their contributions to the project and that they have the right to submit it under the project's license. It's not yet clear that this can be legally satisfied when submitting significant amount of content that has been generated by AI tools. Another issue with AI generated content is that AIs still often hallucinate or just produce bad code, commit messages, documentation or output, even when you point out their mistakes. To avoid these issues, we will reject anything that looks AI generated, that sounds overly formal or bloated, that looks like AI slop, that looks good on the surface but makes no sense, or that senders don=E2=80=99t understand or cannot explain. It's my understanding that copyright attaches to translations, at least under U.S. and Canadian law, and so the sign-off requirements would need to be met here. So I'm afraid that we wouldn't be able to accept such contributions if they were made due to the need for sign-off with the DCO. --=20 brian m. carlson (they/them) Toronto, Ontario, CA --4PwoEpAHHRJWPPRK Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.4.8 (GNU/Linux) iHUEABYKAB0WIQQILOaKnbxl+4PRw5F8DEliiIeigQUCaYP4MwAKCRB8DEliiIei gfstAQC0NcEI+qH1HzAONWHWASBb2JTJzq4WKtNfTE+fzCta8QEAlvmr+VLnw3gE 9VEXObJl0qYZdG/SQR2+JIdgET9f+AM= =t5zR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --4PwoEpAHHRJWPPRK--