Re: tag for translators?

[David Merrill <dmerrill@lupercalia.net>]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 03:03:28PM +0900, ±Ç¼ø¼± wrote:
> Hello guys...
> I've been around this mailing list for long time but mostly read-only.
> 
> But this time I think I should talk something.
> 
> Before that, let me introduce myself. :-)
> 
> I am the maintainer of Korean Linux Documentation Project since Ocbober, 1996
> and coordinated the Korean Translation ever since.

Nice to meet you.

> Yes...English itself is the biggest barrier to most non-Englist linuxers.
> (including me!! :-)
> So we Koreans are doing much translations day by day
> but one thing I've wondering was that why the LDP author guide doesn't
> have a note for translators.

Well, that's a very good question. I remember talking about
translation efforts at the LDP summit, and I got the impression that
the translation efforts were pretty independent projects voluntarily.
So, I assumed that translators would take care of those kinds of
issues on their own.
 
> As for linuxdoc sgml dtd, there is no tag for translators.
> Hence one guy patched the sgml internally and we are using it.
> (<trans>, <tdate> tag was added)
> 
> And these days, we are moving to DocBook format.
> But the docbookbook doesn't have a tag for translators either.
> We tried best but we couldn't find a way on how to specify the information
> of translator because listing the personal name to file is the 
> biggest motivation to volunteer translators.

You're right, there is no special tag for translators, and author
doesn't really seem right either. When I have done DocBook
translations (a different kind of translation, yes), I have used the
<othercredit> tag. This tag does have a downside in that it does not
appear in the html output, which makes you a kind of silent
contributor.

I recommend you use the version tags also to indicate that this
version is the first DocBook version, translated by Joe Blow. I've
seen a couple of HOWTOs that use this approach. Or, let us know if you
have any other suggestions.

> Currently, we changed the Norman Walsh's DocBook stylesheet a bit little
> and using the <editor> tag to specify the translator.

<editor> is not really the right tag, but then again there *is* no
right tag. So, it's hard to argue against it. :)

> My question is
> 1. Is there any specific tag in DocBook that was created for translators?
> 2. If not, how do you(non-English LDP maintainers) make your 
> DocBook sgml source? What is the best way to specify the translator?
> 
> Not all the people speak English. So translation is a very important job
> and valuable online resource to non-English speaking linuxers. :-)

Yes, it is. It's just as valuable as originally writing the document,
to speakers of your language.

Thanks for bringing this up. Maybe we can even lobby to get a
<translator> tag put into DocBook -- it certainly seems appropriate.

-- 
Dr. David C. Merrill                     http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                dmerrill@lupercalia.net
Collection Editor & Coordinator            http://www.linuxdoc.org

take forceful action:
	Do something that should have been done a long time ago.


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