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Maintaining Translations

Once you've started translating, the ongoing work is keeping your translations up to date as the English source evolves. This page describes a practical workflow for tracking changes and updating your translated files.

The Basic Idea

The English documentation changes over time — bugs get fixed, features get documented, examples get improved. As a translator, you need to:

  1. Detect which English files have changed since you last translated
  2. See what specifically changed
  3. Apply the equivalent changes to your translated files
  4. Verify your work builds correctly

Set Up Your Working Environment

Check out both active branches:

svn checkout https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk/docs httpd-trunk
svn checkout https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/branches/2.4.x/docs httpd-2.4

Track Changes with SVN

The simplest way to see what's changed since a known revision is svn diff between revisions. If you noted that you last synchronized your translation at revision 1900000, you can see all changes since then:

svn log -r 1900000:HEAD docs/manual/mod/mod_rewrite.xml
svn diff -r 1900000:HEAD docs/manual/mod/mod_rewrite.xml

Tip: Note the current revision number each time you finish updating a translation. Add it as a comment at the top of your translated file:

<!-- English Revision: 1912345 -->

This makes it easy to check what's changed next time:

svn diff -r 1912345:HEAD docs/manual/mod/mod_rewrite.xml

Update Your Translation

With the diff output showing what changed in the English source, apply the equivalent changes to your translated file. Focus on:

Verify Your Work

Build the docs to confirm your XML is valid and the output looks right:

cd docs/manual/build
./build.sh validate-xml
./build.sh <your-language-code>

Open the generated HTML in a browser to review the final result.

Submit Your Updates

Send your updated files as a patch:

svn diff > translation-update.patch

Email the patch to docs@httpd.apache.org, or attach it to a Bugzilla ticket.

Staying in Sync

A few habits that make maintenance easier:

Questions?

If you get stuck or have questions about maintaining translations, reach out to docs@httpd.apache.org. We're happy to help.