Qualifications of the Reviewer of Translated Doc

[JHKChan <jh...@itzone.info>]

Dear ALL,

I am concerned about the qualifications of the reviewer of translated doc. 
Is the Apache HTTP Server Documentation Project just request for a fluent 
speaker for the relevant language to have a review on the translated doc? 
Do the reviewers need to be famous or well-reputated? If not, then why do 
we need reviewers? We can just let our friends to put their names there. 
This is my real concern.

JHKChan

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Re: Qualifications of the Reviewer of Translated Doc

[Joshua Slive <jo...@slive.ca>]

JHKChan wrote:
> Dear ALL,
> 
> I am concerned about the qualifications of the reviewer of translated doc. 
> Is the Apache HTTP Server Documentation Project just request for a fluent 
> speaker for the relevant language to have a review on the translated doc? 
> Do the reviewers need to be famous or well-reputated? If not, then why do 
> we need reviewers? We can just let our friends to put their names there. 
> This is my real concern.

In an ideal world, we would only accept translations and reviews from 
people who we trust based on a history of participation in the project. 
  In the real world, that would result in us needing to reject most 
translations.

Instead, we simply ask for the translations to be reviewed by another 
fluent speaker to assure a basic level of quality.  It is best if the 
reviewer is also a participant in the documentation project.  At 
minimum, the reviewer should send an email to the list confirming that 
they have reviewed the translation.

Certainly it would be very easy for someone to submit a translation, and 
then submit a review themselves under a different email address.  There 
is nothing we can do to prevent that.  If people get their kicks by 
trying to cheat a volunteer project, then so be it.

Just for some perspective, I can tell you that this policy is a 
middle-ground.  In the PHP documentation project, they accept 
translations from pretty-much anyone with no reviews necessary.  They 
don't seem to have any problems; they have much more translations that 
we do. On the other hand, some of the commercial distributors of Apache 
would prefer that we accept only translations that can be reviewed by 
core team members.  The response to that is, essentially, if you want 
"trusted" docs, you should delete eveything other than english before 
using Apache.

The worst case scenario here is someone inserting political messages or 
other garbage ("Apache Sucks!!!") in a translation.  If it is a language 
not spoken by anyone reading cvs@httpd.apache.org, then it would 
probably not be caught, and would make it through to the release.  In my 
opinion, the only thing that would do is make the submitter look stupid.

Joshua.


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Re: Qualifications of the Reviewer of Translated Doc

[Joshua Slive <jo...@slive.ca>]

Klootz Morse wrote:

> As far as I understand there is no commit member who can and will check and 
> commit my translation to russian. So, now it will be useless to begin 
> translation. But I can look to the current improvement process and send my 
> comments.

That is not the policy as I understand (and impliment) it.  It is not 
necessary that the reviewer be a committer.  It is strongly prefered 
that the reviewer be a participant on this list, and it is necessary 
that the list gets an email from the reviewer confirming that they have 
carried out the review.

Joshua.


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Re: Qualifications of the Reviewer of Translated Doc

[Rich Bowen <rb...@rcbowen.com>]

On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Klootz Morse wrote:

> Hi everybody!
>
> I do understand JHKChan's concern about the qualification of the reviewer of
> translated doc. It looks fair to check the quality of job before making it
> publically available.
>
> As far as I understand there is no commit member who can and will check and
> commit my translation to russian. So, now it will be useless to begin
> translation. But I can look to the current improvement process and send my
> comments.

This seems a very unfortunate position, as this would mean that we are
forever limited to the languages that are already spoken/understood by
the current committers, with no opportunity for this group to expand.

So far, we have had very good success with our current method, with very
little making it through the process that was substandard and/or
incorrect. Each time a translation has been submitted, we have been able
to locate someone who was able to verify its correctness. Sure, the
concern is valid, but has thus far not proven to be a problem. It is
very circular reasoning. If we already had someone on "the team" who was
a native speaker of the language in question, surely we would already
have a translation into that language. The goal is to get translations
into languages that we don't already have, which, necessarily, means
that we'll also have to have an outside source of verification.

-- 
Rich Bowen - rbowen@rcbowen.com
http://kenya.rcbowen.com/


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Re: Qualifications of the Reviewer of Translated Doc

[Klootz Morse <kl...@themail.com>]

Hi everybody!

I do understand JHKChan's concern about the qualification of the reviewer of 
translated doc. It looks fair to check the quality of job before making it 
publically available.

As far as I understand there is no commit member who can and will check and 
commit my translation to russian. So, now it will be useless to begin 
translation. But I can look to the current improvement process and send my 
comments.

Best wishes,
Boris L. Zanin (aka klootz), 3.IX.2002

> Dear ALL,
>
> I am concerned about the qualifications of the reviewer of translated doc.
> Is the Apache HTTP Server Documentation Project just request for a fluent
> speaker for the relevant language to have a review on the translated doc?
> Do the reviewers need to be famous or well-reputated? If not, then why do
> we need reviewers? We can just let our friends to put their names there.
> This is my real concern.
>
> JHKChan




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Re: Qualifications of the Reviewer of Translated Doc

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@webweaving.org>]

> I am concerned about the qualifications of the reviewer of translated doc.
> Is the Apache HTTP Server Documentation Project just request for a fluent
> speaker for the relevant language to have a review on the translated doc?
> Do the reviewers need to be famous or well-reputated? If not, then why do
> we need reviewers? We can just let our friends to put their names there.

We try to get at least one completely indepedent review by a person fluent
in the languange before we add anything to the repository.

However note that this is an open mailing list - and we always solicit and
encourage feedback, bugs (you -can- file a bug against the documentation!)
if a translation is somewhere lacking.

The more people participate the merrier !

Dw


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