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3.3 Peer Review

First and foremost, find at least one person for peer review. You will review her translations, and she will review yours (at least in the beginning). Being a team leader does not mean that you cannot make mistakes; everyone does. The mutual review (especially if done by a larger group) is crucial for the quality of the translation process. Too many errors are just missed (especially if they are obvious) when the translator does a final review of her own translation.

It is good to establish a practice: Do not commit officially (i.e. in ‘www’, which will appear online at https://www.gnu.org immediately) a translation that is not yet reviewed by someone else who is not the translator. Always perform a final review yourself even if the translation has been checked by another member of the team. In other words, every translation installed at gnu.org should pass through your hands (read: eyes).

One common technique for performing such reviews is to use a mailing list—the translator sends the new translation and participants comment on specific parts, quoting them appropriately. The benefit of this approach is that it is straightforward, but the drawback is that there is no automatic “record” about the conclusion of the specific discussion (or sub-thread) and sometimes such discussions easily digress, making it even harder to come up with a solution.

Another way is to use Savannah’s built-in trackers (the ‘Tasks’ and ‘Bugs’ trackers, specifically). This is further explained in the next section, see How to Track Tasks and Bugs Using Savannah. One way or another, you should create some kind of review process.


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