Hi all,

I have a question concerning KDE translations. I frequently read about problems with distribution 1 here and distribution 2 there. To quote from Planet: "Translations in Kubuntu still in bad shape".

Unfortunately I don't understand the system of translating KDE. Has each distribution it's own translating team? Does each community do this work on it's own? I can imagine that there are some supplements which need additional work but shouldn't there be a way to translate KDE centrically?

Or perhaps I don't understand the current situation for now. Hope somebody can tell me.

SebastianHRO wrote:Has each distribution it's own translating team? Does each community do this work on it's own? I can imagine that there are some supplements which need additional work but shouldn't there be a way to translate KDE centrically?

Translation happens as part of the KDE community contributions, just like software development.
Those are also the translations most distributions ship in their internationalization packages.

Some distributors think it is a good idea to overwrite the translations provided by KDE (in this context usually referred to as "upstream translations") with partial translations gathered from their users.
In the case of Ubuntu translations done by Ubuntu users through the Rosetta website.

However, this does not seem to work well, perfectly good internationalizations from KDE (and other projects such as GNOME) get replaced by half or badly translated text.
Workaround is usually to install the uncorrupted translation packages from the respective Debian branch and hope and pray that either Rosetta gets fixed or Canonical decides to value their non English native speaking users. Whatever comes first.

Cheers,
_