Topic on Talk:Technical Collaboration Guidance/Cases/ORES

I think that there might be some limits around "translations have to occur". What if the product is only intended for users of a particular language? The TCG is meant to work for volunteer devs, too, including devs that are building something for use only at their home wiki.

Also: What are the devs supposed to do, if no translator chooses to provide translations, despite a reasonable effort to find translators? Some stuff is difficult to translate or just not interesting, and there are times when our volunteer translators are busy with more important work. The WMF could throw extra resources at translation for its own work (there are dozens of multi-lingual staff members, or they could find a few thousand dollars to hire professional translators), but volunteer devs are much more constrained.

I believe the point is using plain language and caring about i18n (point 2 of Principles).

Sure, everyone wants translations.

But what should happen to the product if you can't get translations for an announcement, despite making a reasonable effort?

Nothing? I mean, there are wikis out there whose interface isn't entirely translated. Devs/product teams will do their part, the rest is usually up to others. We are going to work more and more with translators this year though, and maybe we can also discuss this topic with them. I believe there are ways to flag certain stuff as priority, in case it's necessary, although I don't think we ever really used it as a team.

If "nothing" happens when you can't get translations, then "translations have to occur" is a false statement. "Have to" or "must" means "bad things happen if you don't get translations".

It appears that the intended statement is "Product teams must make a reasonable effort to request appropriate translations" – and that it is acceptable if the result of that reasonable effort is zero translations.

/And/ they have to make the same effort to provide content that can actually be translated. I'm pretty sure we never intended to ask anyone for miracles, just their due diligence :) It's a good point that can be addressed - in the same way in which "Responsibility for translations is not on the translators, it is on the technical producer" sounds ominous when you don't also see the rest of the sentence.

Can't we just change that sentence from "translations have to occur" to "translations have to be possible - use plain language and follow the Localisation best practices" ?

(This seems like a mountain/molehill discussion that could have been avoided by just fixing the language in question...) Ping @Keegan (WMF) just in case the others were waiting for your input.