Re: Translations [of Documentation] in Git release?

[Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>]

Dill <sarpulhu@gmail.com> writes:

> Is there a plan to include translations of the Documentation within
> Git or should they exist outside of the project?

First, you should have mention that you are talking about translating
_Documentation_, because there are at least three areas which can be
translated:
 * GUI (gtik and git-gui), which is being done
 * Documentation, which leads to translated manpages and HTML docs
 * git command messages (but only porcelain, as scripts parse
   git command output)
 
Second, the problem with translating Documentation is twofold. There
is fundamental problem with translated documentation becoming out of
sync (stale) unless you have people ready to follow changes to main
documentation.  This is less of a problem with GUI messages, as they
change less frequently, there are shorter, and there is less volume of
them.

And there is technical problem of how to organize translations.  With
GUI translations we just use gettext conventions.  I don't know any
such convention for docs: there is suffix convention used by Apache to
serve var language files (filename.txt.de, filename.txt.ja.euc-jp),
and there is gettext-like convention of separate directories used by
manpages (en/filename.txt, ja/filename.txt).  And there is question
where to put untranslated original...  And to enhance Makefile to put
translations in correct place.  And possibly alter RPM .spec file to
put translations in separate packages.

So I am not sure if translated documentation should be not maintained
out of tree...

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git