In recent days, many public accounts have published official Python documentation. However, a particularly strange phenomenon occurred, which is ironic.

The Chinese translation of Python documents has always been “unknown”. A few months ago, I joked about this “Let’s talk about Python Chinese Community translation”. At that time, we were making 10.3% progress, far behind Japan and France, and even behind Brazil!

This so-called Chinese version is, of course, the remnants of an unfinished translation. I just checked. Overall progress is 19.7%.

Some official accounts explained that this is not an official announcement, not an official release, and also pointed out that the Chinese version of the address is a hidden entrance. It’s all true.

However, the weird thing is that there are some public accounts in the release, somehow misspread, the news became an official release, all the translation is completed, exciting and long expected, as for the hidden entrance jump problem, why the downloaded document is in English, it is completely impossible to explain. This is highly misleading.

Having collected translations of PEP documents, I came across a few things about translating official documents. Here are a few:

1. Scattered personnel and lack of core. As far as I can see, different people in V station, Hua Python Email group, Jianshu and Zhihu have initiated translation calls or consultations respectively, but few of them received response, and no large enough core organization has been formed.

2. Official translation? Python officially introduced a translation mode in PEP-545 in 2017, in which national language translations are performed on the collaboration platform Transifex. In fact, this is the official version and the basis for the final release. The progress mentioned above refers to the progress on this platform.

3. Wild translation? By wild, I mean translations that are not on Transifex. Sporadic translations of parts can be seen online, but the results have not been incorporated into the official platform. There are plenty of translators in the community and they are competent, but they are scattered. There was a big guy in the mail group who said he had translated more than 40 standard library and C module documents, but didn’t bother to organize them. There have been attempts to organize it, but just last summer, a well-known PHP webmaster started a Python community and assembled a group of translators. They translated the introductory tutorial section of the official Python 3.7 documentation, however, plans for subsequent content seem to have been abandoned.

As for the attitude towards translation, it seems that most people are interested in translation, but they have little time. They hope that someone can lead the organization and participate in making contributions. I have the same idea myself. As a participant, witness and glory taker, who wants to spend so much energy, shoulder the heavy responsibilities and plan, and maybe not get the best of it?

Writing articles is difficult to adjust, translation documents is even more so, meet with questions about the level of translation, but also discuss, and meet the following bar essence, can only destroy the mood.

The aforementioned webmaster offered to maintain a long-maintained version in his community. In fact, they’ve actually done something. In addition to the introductory tutorial, they’ve translated two classic books. However, they have also attracted criticism: inappropriate wording of “official documentation”, inappropriate use of official platforms, the commercial operation of the website……

Talkers always have their own reasons, don’t contribute to things, and ignore the contributions of others. To be sure, it is not proper to claim “official” Chinese documents. It is just an individual/community behavior. As for the official way, as long as there are translation results, it is not difficult to do; And finally, what’s wrong with a site with a few stickers?

I understand the community translation situation, roughly as above.

In general, there is a lot of fragmentation, much like the Python language, and much like a large number of tripartite modules, where each has its own capabilities.

There are also those who work quietly. From 10% four months ago to 20% now, our translation progress has skyrocketed. I wonder how many people are making continuous contributions behind this? And they’re not known yet.

There is still a long way to go before all official documents are translated, and the reality of the situation needs to be recognized.

I am generally optimistic. So, one last digression.

These days, there is a hot topic — 996.ICU. In just one week, the number of Github stars has broken 100,000, which is definitely a record. That’s the power of coder-initiated campaigns.

At the time of writing, the Father of Python gave the project star and tweeted his support.

We may have gone a bit off track with our official documents, but it doesn’t matter, we are in line with international standards when it comes to using the world’s largest gay dating platform.

What’s more, after April Fool’s Day, we have another holiday that is also in line with international standards — International Labor Day, which commemorates the Eight-hour work day established by the Chicago Strike of 1886.

Related links:

Translation progress: www.transifex.com/python-doc/…

V station topic: neue.v2ex.com/t/477400#re…

Mailing list: groups.google.com/forum/#! Top…