[Translators] Vienamese Discussion about the issue of Dictatorship in Translation Project

[Christoph Miebach]

Hello!

I ask you to look at the situation/problem and possible solutions once 
again. To solve the puzzle, I will provide some information and my point 
of view:

Felix Paul Kühne is a developer of VLC's ports to OS X and iOS. Just 
take my word for a moment that he did not intend to do any harm (after 
reading the mail you might find your own opinion).
I will quote some parts of his email:

---------
a) as private conversation wasn't successful

b) which does not appear to be a correct translation according to both 
Google and Bing Translate.

c) I just put "Thanks for the translation to the VLC Transifex team". 
Individual names can be added of course. Just email me and I'll do that 
right away.
---------

Regarding a: Private conversation is usually fine if the issue is not 
relevant for everyone on this mailing list.

b: This is one thing I learned about translations: They need to match 
the original text's meaning. If, for example the developers confused two 
options in a select box so that "confirm" and "cancel" are written in 
the wrong place. A good translator checks his results and sees that. The 
right thing to do is to tell it to the developer. The wrong thing is to 
simply put the translation in the right order.

c: Looks like a way to go.


Now, I will answer the latest email.
On 18.08.2013 12:58, Mr. Phan Anh wrote:

> The person as I knew who was, is, and will be The Real Maintainer in
> Translation, is Christopher Miebach, not someone, just by one entry in the
> whole translation, jumped in and threatened me.

Indeed, I am the current translation maintainer for several of 
videolan's projects.
I don't do much more here than providing information to translators and 
collect the translations as well as forwarding issues the translators 
find (i.e. wrong english texts) to the development team.

There is the famous VLC media player for desktop, running on many 
platforms including Windows and Linux. There is a port to Android and 
there is the port for iOS.
The main pages of the website are translated as well.

vlc for desktop alone has more than 6000 msgids, which is a very large 
amount of work for every single translator or translator team.

We know that this is hard work, and as well we know that a good 
translation will improve the using experience for the user (as well as a 
bad/wrong translation can harm it).

> That’s the reason why I have put the phrase of Vietnamese Translation
> Software in the entry “About VLC” on iOS translation.

The "about VLC" should be about VLC. Mentioning the translators is still 
possible.

> VLC is a community, where the postion of each person is declared and
> decided by the maintainer of Translation Group not made by a choice from a
> suddenly programmer from no where.

In fact, I did not touch the transifex translations for iOS. Instead 
Felix does all the remaining work: Download, copying...

> He claimed that by the entry I put in, he doesn’t agree and now he deleted
> the whole of my translation.

Technically, this is the simplest solution. Explaining why translations 
_need_ to match the original meaning might have been the better choice, 
though.

> Vietnamese is a language that I am fluent. What do you think about one day,
> a guy from Germany, sends to you a pm and “I wont accept that”, and he just
> a programmer, not the in-charge of Translation Group in maintaining?

Well, I am in charge because I agreed to do the work, I am not any kind 
of boss here.

> I come to VLC with my sharing emotion, not coming here for threating in
> receiving.

I would bet, Felix would say something similar about himself.

Seriously, international emails are often somewhat misinterpreted.


> 2. By all the content in 1 section, the position of maintaining the
> language for translation has to be reviewed again.

I don't understand this sentence.



Now, for the real issue, for all translations:
Keep the original meaning while translating.

If you find something missing (translators names/credits) just say so.


How about mentioning "Phan Anh" as Vietnamese translator in VLC for iOS?

Best regards

Christoph