Re: translating drafts.. Re: Brazilian portuguese ...

Charles,

first of all, thanks for your thoughtful mail; it is an issue that came up in
the past and it is indeed a good time to have a brainstorm on it. Hopefully we
will come up with a good solution.

I think the question is the intended audience. In our intention the
/Consortium/Translations pages are aimed at a different audience than the one
you are referring to (which does *not* mean that the issues you raise are not
real, see below!). The targeted audience for the index in
/Consortium/Translation is the 'end-users', so to say, people who might be less
interested in the development of a specific recommendation, but are rather
seeking to use those in their own developments. Obviously, that audience is much
larger and, I believe, has a statistically much larger percentage of persons
whose English is not good enough to understand the various documents properly.
They do not necessarily understand (or care about!) all the details of the
development process at W3C; if they get hold of a translation of a, say, Working
Draft, they may not appreciate the fact that this document may be very different
from the final Recommendation. (Worst: it may *never* make it to a
Recommendation, and people may mistakenly believe that they have in hand an
official W3C technology by reading, say, a CR translation...).

B.t.w.: there are currently 18 translations of CR-s, WG-s, etc, that *are* on
the site that got indexed when the we made a clean-up of the translations a few
years ago. Most of those *are* old documents that never got an update... as you
put it in your mail: they left "the speakers of some language working with only
a draft while the world has moved on from there..."

Let us come back to the issue you were referring to, namely the language vs.
development process which is a radically different problem. Personally (but that
may be only me!) I believe the biggest obstacle for non-English speakers to
participate in the development is not understanding the documents themselves,
but rather the possibility to express themselves in other than their native
language both in writing and on meetings.

You are right, however, that some sort of a draft translation of a document
might be helpful and might also reveal some awkwardness in the original
document. Although, I think, the level of usefulness differ very much from one
technology to the other. To take some examples (very personal again): while
having draft translations for WCAG is indeed important and useful, I am not sure
that it is so important for the development of SVG.

Actually, the way the WCAG operates might be the way forward. The Working Group
actively asks for draft translations of WCAG2. However, in a common agreement,
these translations are *not* maintained on the /Consortium/Translations pages;
they are considered as working documents of the Working Group (although they do
not list them on [1]; probably they should). To take the specific example: if
the CSS groups believes that a translation of the CSS3 draft *is* important for
advancement of the work, *and* Maurizio is happy to do it, then this translation
should be part of the (public) working document on the Working Group's pages.
And that could be a general policy for these types of contributions.

As a summary here is what I would propose:

 * WGs that hear of translations of draft documents should link to them from
their public home pages (if they feel the translation is worth linking to).
Translators should contact the respective working group to check whether the
working group thinks translating a specific document version is a good idea.

 * To make the situation cleaner, we would also move those 18 translations to
the Working group space that are currently indexed on /Consortium/Translations

 * The text on /Consortium/Translations should be made clearer to reflect this
policy more exactly.

What do you think?

Cheers

Ivan

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/#Current


Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Aug 2005 09:03:23 +0200, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> ... The translation home page
>> clearly states that we would prefer the translation of stable documents.
>> Tutorials and stuff are fine; for documents in the recommendation track
>> translating an intermediate version like a candidate recommendation is
>> problematic. Lots can change between that stage and a final
>> recommendation... So
>> we try to avoid putting translations of earlier versions on the
>> translation index.
>
>
> There are a couple of reasons why I think it would be god to have
> translations of drafts. I am aware that there is a risk that people
> won't  have a translation of a draft, but then no such consideration
> seems tyo  arise in connection with the idea of publishing drafts in
> english.
>
> Having drafts in translation is helpfful for peopole who would like to
> participate in the development of a specification, who may have
> something  very important to contribute but are not able to contribute
> it in english  (which is after all the native language of only a few
> countreis).
>
> Similarly, it seems that W3C is looking for implementations in order to
> test specs. If those implementations are tested in a variety of
> languages,  this can only be a good thing. There are some things that
> don't really  cause problems in english, but do in other languages -
> whether in specific  ones or in translating in general. Sometimes thesee
> things will eb picked  up by the i18n groups, but istrikes me as useful
> to actually encourage  testing for real, not just mentally imagining it.
>
> The development of testing groups, of work-in-progress software being
> managed by and offered to communities who don't happen to speak english
> strikes me as very positive - something that makes the "World Wide" in
> W3C  a little less of a grandiose claim and a little more meaningful.
>
> At the same time, it is important to update translations just as drafts
> are updated, and not leave the speakers of some language working with
> only  a draft while the world has moved on from there...
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals
>

--

Ivan Herman
W3C Communications Team, Head of Offices
C/o W3C Benelux Office at CWI, Kruislaan 413
1098SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
tel: +31-20-5924163; mobile: +31-641044153;
URL: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/