Re: [PATCH 1/2] docs: doc-guide: add a guide for translators

From: Weijie Yuan

Date: Thu Oct 15 2026 - 10:29:46 EST


+cc zh_CN maintainers

On 2026-10-15 07:50:40 -0600, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Weijie Yuan <wy@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> >> > For the Translator field, zh_TW just did a cleanup to totally remove
> >> > them.
> >>
> >> Makes sense. I dropped the ":Translator:" line from the example, and the
> >> guide keeps the advice to leave contact information to MAINTAINERS.
> >
> > I personally think this is somehow a hard tradeoff, so my opinion is
> > rather neutral, and I respect your decisions.
> >
> > On the one hand, I think keeping this field is indeed a way to give
> > credit to the contributors, which can motivate more contributions and
> > contributors. On the other hand, over the years, this field has seemed a
> > bit cumbersome and inconsistent in both Chinese translations.
>
> I personally don't see why translations are different from any other
> contribution in this regard. The credit lives in the commit logs; we
> don't sprinkle our names throughout the source for every change we make.

Yes, very reasonable.

I haven't found out the reason why we had the "Translator" field at the
very beginning. I guess it might be something like translating a book.
Usually, the translator's name would be written below/near the original
author's name on the title page. (?) However, the difference is that we
have commit logs, so I totally agree.

Then perhaps we could also clean up zh_CN later.

Thanks!