Obsolete translations - remove, keep or mix with English?

[ludekjanda]

We recently ran into this problem with contact.md, which now appears to be out of date in most languages.

See #1572

It seems that most of translations have long been out of sync with English.

I am preparing a new update of all resources in Crowdin and plan to do such an update regularly.

The current strategy - download only 100% translated and approved pages and upload them to the site. This strategy creates a lot of obsolete content in translations because there is a long waiting time between the source update and its 100% translation in Crowdin.

My question:

What to do if the translated page is out of date compared to the English resource and the page is not 100% translated in Crowdin yet:

1. Remove the outdated translated page and replace it with the English one until the translation is 100% complete in Crowdin.
2. Mix translation + English, i.e. publish a translation where the sentences that are not yet translated remain in English until the translation is complete in Crowdin.
3. leave the out-of-date translated page on the Let's encrypt site until a 100% translated version is available.

Thank you in advance for your comments.

[tdelmas]

The outdated pages with lastmod have a warning on top:

https://letsencrypt.org/fr/docs/expiration-emails/

Note : La version anglaise a été mise à jour depuis sa traduction (9 janv. 2023) Voir en anglais

It means "The English version has been updated since its translation (9 Jan. 2023) [View in English]"

I'm not a fan of the mixing solution, if people can read in English, they have a link to read the updated version.

[ludekjanda]

@tdelmas Why I can't see that warning on the contact page?

https://letsencrypt.org/fr/contact/

It has lastmod: 2021-08-31

While the English file has lastmod: 2023-08-23

[tdelmas]

It's because that page doesn't have show_lastmod. Maybe we should separate the two concepts.

[ludekjanda]

It's because that page doesn't have show_lastmod. Maybe we should separate the two concepts.

Ah, okay, then we may want to add show_lastmod to the English contact page first:
https://github.com/letsencrypt/website/blob/main/content/en/contact.md

What do you mean by separating the two concepts? After you explained me that there is a way to display that translations are obsolete, I am okay to keep the outdated ones on the site until translations get 100% translated&approved in Crowdin again.

[tdelmas]

What do you mean by separating the two concepts?

Having an option to display "The English version has been updated since its translation" without displaying the last-mod date. (They didn't want the last-mod on some non-doc pages)

I am okay to keep the outdated ones on the site until translations get 100% translated&approved in Crowdin again.

Also, if the translation is really outdated (misleading, or useless in its state), there is always the option to add back untranslated to show the English version.

[ludekjanda]

@tdelmas I think displaying the last-mod date in case of obsolete transaltions makes sense.

It seems there are 2 different strategies now:
docs - warn viewers about out-of-date translations
main pages - out-of-date translations are displayed without warning

Thank you for clarifying. Let me reach out to the stakeholders and ask them what to do with the main pages. I do not feel comfortable with the current strategy, I would rather prefer to remove the out-of-date main pages or display a warning

[ludekjanda]

@tdelmas the answer I have got is

we should add an out of date warning for any page that is translated but has out of date content

Please is there an easy way to add show_lastmod to the en source files?

[tdelmas]

Can I get back to you in a few days? I may have a solution to display that warning without any change in the sources files (only in the generic macros).

The idea will be:

• If show_lastmod = 1 then do like today (i.e. show the last mod date, and if translation out of date, the warning we have
• If show_lastmod != 1 then only show the out-of-date warning (when the translation is indeed out of date)

What do you think about that plan?

[ludekjanda]

I like that @tdelmas such solution would not affect the English source files and would display out-of-date warning in translations only, if my understanding is correct.

Can I get back to you in a few days? I may have a solution to display that warning without any change in the sources files (only in the generic macros).

The idea will be:

• If show_lastmod = 1 then do like today (i.e. show the last mod date, and if translation out of date, the warning we have
• If show_lastmod != 1 then only show the out-of-date warning (when the translation is indeed out of date)

What do you think about that plan?