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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Introducing open-tran.eu
From:       Jacek Śliwerski <rzyj () o2 ! pl>
Date:       2007-03-14 18:55:58
Message-ID: 45F8453E.9040203 () o2 ! pl
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Kevin Donnelly wrote:
> 
> This is a great idea.  I would like to look at it in more detail, since it's 
> similar to Omnivore (see Korrect at 
> http://www.kyfieithu.co.uk/kywiro/index.php?lg=en).  Are you using a database 
> as the backend?  

I am using sqlite3 as a backend.  You can download the complete source 
code from the project's site at http://code.google.com/p/open-tran/. 
But don't worry - this project is not affiliated by Google.

> One thing you might consider making configurable is how a particular item is 
> translated.  Currently, entering a msgid like "open new file" will give you 
> any msgstrs in which those three words occur, so you get translations for 
> "file", "new", "new file", "open file".  

"open new file" is a very good example, because there is no such msgid 
in KDE. Open-Tran returns "open file" and "new file" as first hits 
because they share at most words with "open new file" (actually, 
open-tran computes the number of words in the symmetric difference - the 
lower, the better).  The list with results is sorted according to this 
scoring function, but the way it is presented suggests that they are all 
equal.  I want to add an information about the score as a visual clue 
that could help differentiate them.

Open-Tran was never meant as a tool for automatic translation 
(personally, I don't believe that it will be feasible in my lifetime). 
It gives you suggestions - a list of the most similar phrases to the one 
you are asking for.  If there exists an exact match - it is guaranteed 
to be shown on the top of the list, due to the definition of scoring 
function.  Otherwise, you get something that (in my opinion) is better 
than nothing.

You can submit a whole po file, but I'm not really fond of this 
functionality.  As long as you cannot use open-tran to take advantage of 
the suggestions to really edit and save the file, it seems useless to me 
- nobody will copy the suggestions from the browser to kbabel (or 
whatever tool she uses).  I was thinking about supplying checkboxes - so 
that you could choose a variant you like and then download the file back 
with suggestions... but am skeptical about it.  Would anybody here 
switch to web-based software?

Thanks for your feedback!
-- 
Jacek

PS. I forgot to thank everybody on this list for contributing to KDE, 
open-tran wouldn't exist without your work!
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