Bug 406517

Summary:	Minor updates in English documentations deprecate existing whole translations
Product:	[Applications] krita	Reporter:	Tyson Tan <tysontanx>
Component:	Translation	Assignee:	Krita Bugs <krita-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	normal	CC:	halla
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	nightly build (please specify the git hash!)
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Tyson Tan 2019-04-14 03:36:31 UTC

Every time when Krita's English documentation updates a string to fix a minor typo, the whole translation of that string gets dropped immediately on the website.

I can only speak for the Chinese version but within a week, dozens of perfectly good translations are reverted back to their untranslated state. If it weren't for us using Crowdin, which still remembers every existed translations and smartly suggesting them to similar new strings, we would have lost many hours of good will and hardwork just because the English version wants to add missing period points, change "colour" to "color", and "trc" to "TRC".

Even when we have a 100% pot file, it doesn't gets built unless our English version is updated, which certainly is going to drop some of our translations.

I don't know whether we can improve this technically, but I suggest we review our workflow and cooperation between our writers and translators. It is too frustrating to see perfectly good information getting lost everyday so quickly in such a meaningless way. And it is not helping us teaching and promoting Krita in non-English regions.

Comment 1 Halla Rempt 2019-04-15 09:11:13 UTC

I'm sorry, but the alternative would be to not fix the English, which would be a bad thing, too. 

Crowd-in is the problem here, if translators would use lokalize or poedit, the typo fixes would be marked as fuzzy. You could try to get in touch with Yuri Chornoivan (yurchor@ukr.net), who is one of the people who knows best how KDE's translation systems work, and see what improvements could be made to your translation workflow, and also the person who is creating the typo fix patches.

Comment 2 Tyson Tan 2019-04-15 11:50:10 UTC

OK, I will contact them when I have time. Thank you for the information. 

But I don't really get why it has anything to do with Crowdin -- as we sit here doing nothing, the translated strings on our documentation website are disappearing...we haven't built our project in a week and the SVN script is not pulling anything new from us. It feels as if every time a string is updated it gets a new ID which doesn't match with the existing translated one so it is lost...

Anyway, I can understand that localization is of low priority, and it's not like the documentation becomes useless with a few missing sentences. Just wanted to make sure problems get noticed. 

I guess someone has to be the guy who looks after the localization in their country and update the translation everyday according to the English version instead of expecting things to work out automatically. For better or for worse, that person has to be me in case of Chinese translation. And as an artist of a more primitive mind, I'm being overwhelmed by the scope and technicalities... XD