This past weekend the Ubuntu Brazilian Portuguese Translators and the Brazilian Documentation Team put together a 3-day boot camp for translators and new volunteers. The online classes were held every evening at #ubuntu-br-tradutores, and covered all the steps and methods involved in the process of translating Ubuntu to Brazilian Portuguese, as well as showing people how they can participate in the community.. The very last session, taught by Cássio Martini (and me in the back stage), was performed with live demos and participation of the “students” in real time. I can say, without false modesty, that it was a great way to close the event! I wrote this article (originally in portuguese) approximately 30 minutes prior to the session started, so to serve as a guideline that people could follow online. It is assumed that the reader has already subscrived to our mailing list, criated a GnuPG key, signed the Code of Conduct, and also registered for a free “account” with the Launchpad system. All of these topics were (extremelly well) covered in the first 2 sessions by my friend Alex Rocha. We urge all volunteers interested in joining our team to read this document, which gives a brief introduction about the different systems we currently use, as well as some great tips for when translating packages.

The first step would be to visit our page with a list of all the programs/packages that still need to be translated, kept in order and closely mantained by my good friend André Noel. This is without a doubt the most important page for any member of the Ubuntu Brazilian Portuguese Translators team, whom not only are responsible for their own tasks but must always refvise every suggestion sent by our volunteers! The main difeerence between an official member and a volunteer, besides the ones already mentioned, is that translation suggestions done by a member areautomaticallyaccepted by Rosetta, while the suggestions sent by the volunteers must be accepted (or rejected) by a member. Since Rosetta at its current version does not have a means for a member to see which packages have received new suggestions, sometimes they (suggestions) will sit tight for quite some time until a member, per chance, decides to browse the specific package. This can be very frustrating, and some people have told me this was one of the reasons why they gave up before. That is why I developed the “system” show below, where we have been very successfull tracking modifications and getting volunteers and members to work closer together.

Since this page is part of a wiki, anyone with a valid (FREE) account has the capability to modify it. As you can see, though it is written in portuguese, the table keeps track of the package name, total numbers of strings, percent translated, translator, and revisor.. Here’s how the system works:

1. The individual interested in translating a package (program) modifies this page, adding his name (as registered in the wiki) in the Tradutor (translator) column. Assuming that user Daffy Duck registers himself in the wiki as Daffy and is interested in translating the atlantik package, he would add Daffy in the Tradutorcolumn.
2. Now, he would add the name of one of the offical members from our team in the Revisor column. For this example, Daffy Duck would add the official member Bugs Bunny as his Revisor.
3. Lastly, save the page.

Since all of our members must check this page every single day to see if there are any packages in need of revision, nothing else needs to be done by a volunteer. It would be better if a volunteer contacts his revisor in order to determine his availability. Since we are all volunteers ourselves, it is not garanteed that any given member will be available that same day. Believe me, this could avoid any delay in gettings your suggestions approved. A semi-complete list of all members can be see below. For an up to date list, as well as emails of all members, visite our pagge in Launchpad.

Now, we’re ready to start translating! First, we should login to Launchpad:

Fill out the appropriate fields with your email and password. Note that this page can also be used to register a new account.

After you’ve connected, you can browse the main page which contains a complete list of all packages being translated by our team.

For this article, we’ll assume that Daffy Duck decided to translate the package textinfo:

As you can see below, the interface contains, among other things, the messages that need to be translated in english, and a text box below it where you can type in your suggestion. Note below that messages 1 and 2 have already been translated. But let’s just assume that Daffy does not agree with the translation of the word “character”, and wishes to change it from “caracter” to the correct translation of “caractere”. For those who don’t speak the language, the difference is very minor. Well, all Daffy needs to do is overwrite the message that is currently in the text field, adding his own suggestion. Rosetta is “smart” enough to “distinguish” between suggestions (from a volunteer) and a translation (from a member).  Since Daffy is a volunteer, his suggestion will be stored so that a member can later approve it or reject it.

There’s also a filtering system built-in which allows you to select untranslated messages, those that need revision, translated, or all. To apply a filter, make your selection from the drop-down box and click the Filter button. Unfortunately, the option “Someone should review this translation” can only be used by members to alert others of dubious translations.  Volunteers are urged to send their notifications via email.

Assuming Daffy chose the “untranslated” filter, he would then get the messages dispplayed above.  It is very important to point out that you do not have to translate all messages in order.  We recommend that you send only suggestions to those strings you feel confortable translating.  Note that you can always use the links « First â€â€? Previous â€â€? Next â€â€? Last » to navigate your way around the pages, specially if you decide to skip any given page.  Once you’re done, don’t forget to click on the Save & Continue button.

Well, thid is pretty much the process we use for our translations! Once again I hope this will help other people interested in either helping us or some other translation effort.  I have to thank Luciano Pacheco, source of the inspiration for this article! :)