emacs/doc

* Translating the Emacs manuals

** Copyright assignment

People who contribute translated documents should provide a copyright
assignment to the Free Software Foundation.  See the 'Copyright
Assignment' section in the Emacs manual.


** Translated documents license

The translated documents are distributed under the same license as the
original documents: the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html for more information.

If you have questions regarding the use of the FDL license in your
translation work that are not answered in the FAQ, do not hesitate to
contact the GNU project: https://www.gnu.org/contact/

** Location

*** Texinfo source files

The source files of the translated manuals are located in the doc/
directory, under the directory whose name corresponds to the translated
language.

  E.g. French manuals sources are found under doc/fr.

The structure of the language folders should match the structure of the
English manuals (i.e. include misc, man, lispref, lispintro, emacs).

*** built files

Translated deliverables in info format are built at release time and are
made available for local installation.


** Format

The manuals and their translations are written in the Texinfo format
(with the exception of the org-mode manual that is written in org-mode
and of illustrations for the Introduction to Emacs Lisp Programming that
are written in eps).

See https://www.gnu.org/software/Texinfo/ for more information.

You should install the Texinfo utilities to be able to verify the
translated files, and refer to the Texinfo manual if you do not
understand the meaning of the various Texinfo declarations.

Emacs has a Texinfo mode that properly highlights the Texinfo code to
make it easier to see which parts are text to be translated and which
parts are not.


*** Texinfo specific issues

Until the Emacs/Texinfo projects provide better solutions, here are a
few rules to follow:

- Under each @node, add an @anchor that has the same content at the
original English @node.

- Translate the @node content but leave the @anchor in English.

- Most Emacs manuals are set to include the docstyle.Texi file.  This
file adds the @documentencoding UTF-8 directive to the targeted manual.
There is no need to add this directive in a manual that includes
docstyle.Texi.

- Add a @documentlanguage directive that includes your language.

  E.g. @documentlanguage zh

This directive has currently little effect but will be useful in the
future.

- The @author directive can be used for the translator's name.

  E.g. @author traduit en français par Achile Talon


** Fixing the original document

During the course of the translation, you might find parts of the
original document that need to be updated or otherwise fixed, or even
bugs in Emacs.  If you do not intend to provide fixes right away, please
file a bug report promptly so someone can fix it soon.

See the 'Bugs' section in the Emacs manual.

** Sending contributions

Send your contributions (either files or revisions) to
emacs-devel@gnu.org for review.

Always send contributions in the format of the original document.  Most
of the contents in the Emacs manuals are in Texinfo format, so do not
send contributions that are in derivative formats (e.g. info, html,
docbook, plain text, etc.)

Before sending files for review, ensure that they have been properly
checked for spelling/grammar/typography by at least using the tools that
Emacs provides.

You should also make sure that the Texinfo files build properly on your
system.

Send your contributions as patches (git diff -p --stat), and prefer the
git format-patch form because the format allows easier review and easier
installation of the changes by someone with write access to the
repository.

The Emacs project has a lot of coding, documentation and commenting
conventions.  Sending such patches allows the project managers to make
sure that the contributions comply with the various conventions.


** Discussing translation issues

Translation-related discussions are welcome on the emacs-devel list.
Discussions specific to your language do not have to take place in
English.


** Translation teams

The number of words in the Emacs manuals is above 2,000,000 words and
growing.  While one individual could theoretically translate all the
files, it is more practical to work in language teams.

If you have a small group of translators willing to help, make sure that
the files are properly reviewed before sending them to emacs-devel (see
above).

You are invited to refer to the translation-related documents that the
GNU Project maintains and to get in touch with your language's
translation team to learn from the practices they have developed over
the years.

See https://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.translations.html for
more information.


** Translation processes

Emacs does not yet provide tools that significantly help the translation
process.  A few useful functions would be

- automatic lookup of a list of glossary items when starting to work on
a translation "unit" (paragraph or otherwise), such glossary terms
should be easily insertable at point,

- automatic lookup of past translations to check for similarity and
improve homogeneity over the whole document set, such past translation
matches should be easily insertable at point,

etc.


*** Using the PO format as an intermediate translation format

Although the PO format has not been developed with documentation in
mind, it is well known among free software translation teams and you can
easily use the po4a utility to convert Texinfo to PO for work in
translation tools that support the PO format.

See https://po4a.org for more information.

However, regardless of the intermediate file format that you might use,
you should only send Texinfo files for review to emacs-devel.


*** Free tools that you can use in your processes

A number of free software tools exist, outside the Emacs ecosystem, to
help translators (amateurs and professionals alike) with the translation
process.

If you find that Emacs should implement some of their features, you are
welcome to provide patches to the Emacs project.

Such tools include:

- the GNOME Translation Editor, https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gtranslator/
- KDE's Lokalize, https://apps.kde.org/lokalize/
- OmegaT, http://omegat.org
- the Okapi Framework, https://www.okapiframework.org
- pootle, https://pootle.translatehouse.org

etc.


* Licence of this document

Copyright (C) 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are
permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice
and this notice are preserved.  This file is offered as-is, without any
warranty.