Re: Looking for informations

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi,

Jean Louis wrote on Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 11:12:51AM +0530:
> * Angelo Mattia <address@hidden> [2019-10-28 02:04]:

>> I'd like to know if it is possibile translate the entire groff manual
>> in italian obtaining some money for this kind of work.

> It is good idea. You could hire somebody to translate it.

Note that there is no consensus about this opinion.
For example, personally, i consider translating documentation
a waste of time if not outright harmful.

Writing good documentation requires good understanding of the source
code of the program.  While writers documenting free software often
have that, translators almost never have it.  Translated documentation
is almost always of much lower quality than the real thing and
usually also outdated on top of that.  So it ends up putting useless
and harmful additional load on the project developers: on the one
hand for maintaining translation infrastructure and coordinating
the group of translators (which both typically require substantial
effort, and the second in particular tends to be very frustrating),
on the other hand to deal with questions from users who got misled
by reading the wrong version of the documentation.

Consequently, i would suggest rejecting translations offers.

For a program used by a relatively small and technical community
like groff it makes even less sense than for software used by vast
crowds of unskilled people.  And for a language like Italian (or
French or German or Hindi) where most speakers can read English as
well, it makes even less sense than for a language like Chinese where
considerable numbers of speakers may not understand English all
that well.

Yours,
  Ingo