Suggested new role: Translator

[MichaelChirico]

Hi @Rdatatable/committers, I think it's worth considering Translator as a separate role in GOVERNANCE.

Edits to message translation are unique enough within the project overall to warrant their own role, IMO.

Another alternative would be make a new role about documentation only (which would sort-of subsume the Translator role, as translation can be seen as a form of documentation). That could include folks that have made significant contributions to vignettes or blogs, regardless of making "substantial" (as defined in GOVERNANCE) contributions to "the code itself".

I also want to highlight that the process of translation often involves "substantial" contributions to the code itself -- refactoring or otherwise clarifying the code in an effort to make translation easier (including translation from code to English as well as from English to other languages). In {potools} documentation we call this distinction "developers" vs. "translators".

One potential issue is it's very easy (and even currently not uncommon) for a contributor to be a Translator and another role, whereas the current set of roles effectively partitions the set of contributors.

Let me know your thoughts.

[tdhock]

I was thinking about adding Translator (and some other roles) but in the end I decided against it, for simplicity.
is there a strong reason we need to define Translators in GOVERNANCE? rather than just being able to mention them via github org teams?

[MichaelChirico]

The thought came while writing up the current changes+issues (#6751/#6748/#6749), I found it a bit uneasy to describe "substantial" vs. not contributions w.r.t. translations. I think it could help clarify that translations are big and valued contributions (worthy of a "role"), but still are outside "substantial" which is talking about "core" package code, i.e., that actually "does stuff".

OTOH, maybe all we really need is a good definition of 'substantial' that clarifies this.

[tdhock]

for simplicity I would just go with a good definition of substantial. (not adding a new Translator role)

[MichaelChirico]

OK, closing as subsumed by #6751, thanks for the discussion