Add a "Preserving Quotation Marks" section to prevent AI-assisted
translation and review from incorrectly converting language-specific
UTF-8 curly quotes (e.g., „ U+201E, " U+201C for Bulgarian) into
ASCII straight quotes " (U+0022), which would cause PO string
truncation and syntax errors.
Also update the "Special characters" item in the Quality checklist
to reference the new section.
Signed-off-by: Jiang Xin <worldhello.net@gmail.com>
Add a new "Reviewing po/XX.po" section to po/AGENTS.md that provides
comprehensive guidance for AI agents to review translation files.
Translation diffs lose context, especially for multi-line msgid and
msgstr entries. Some LLMs ignore context and cannot evaluate
translations accurately; others rely on scripts to search for context
in source files, making the review process time-consuming. To address
this, git-po-helper implements the compare subcommand, which extracts
new or modified translations with full context (complete msgid/msgstr
pairs), significantly improving review efficiency.
A limitation is that the extracted content lacks other
already-translated content for reference, which may affect terminology
consistency. This is mitigated by including a glossary in the PO file
header. git-po-helper-generated review files include the header entry
and glossary (if present) by default.
The review workflow leverages git-po-helper subcommands:
- git-po-helper compare: Extract new or changed entries between two
versions of a PO file into a valid PO file for review. Supports
multiple modes:
* Compare HEAD with the working tree (local changes)
* Compare a commit's parent with the commit (--commit)
* Compare a commit with the working tree (--since)
* Compare two arbitrary revisions (-r)
- git-po-helper msg-select: Split large review files into smaller
batches by entry index range for manageable review sessions. Supports
range formats like "-50" (first 50), "51-100", "101-" (to end).
Evaluation with the Qwen model:
git-po-helper agent-run review --commit 2000abefba --agent qwen
Benchmark results:
| Metric | Value |
|------------------|----------------------------------|
| Turns | 22 |
| Input tokens | 537263 |
| Output tokens | 4397 |
| API duration | 167.84 s |
| Review score | 96/100 |
| Total entries | 63 |
| With issues | 4 (1 critical, 2 major, 1 minor) |
Signed-off-by: Jiang Xin <worldhello.net@gmail.com>
Add a new "Translating po/XX.po" section to po/AGENTS.md with detailed
workflow and procedures for AI agents to translate language-specific PO
files. Users can invoke AI-assisted translation in coding tools with a
prompt such as:
"Translate the po/XX.po file by referring to @po/AGENTS.md"
Translation results serve as drafts; human contributors must review and
approve before submission.
To address the low translation efficiency of some LLMs, batch
translation replaces entry-by-entry translation. git-po-helper
implements a gettext JSON format for translation files, replacing PO
format during translation to enable batch processing.
Evaluation with the Qwen model:
git-po-helper agent-run --agent=qwen translate po/zh_CN.po
Test translation (127 entries, 50 per batch):
Initial state: 5998 translated, 91 fuzzy, 36 untranslated
Final state: 6125 translated, 0 fuzzy, 0 untranslated
Successfully translated: 127 entries (91 fuzzy + 36 untranslated)
Success rate: 100%
Benchmark results (3-run average):
AI agent using gettext tools:
| Metric | Value |
|------------------|--------------------------------|
| Avg. Num turns | 86 (176, 44, 40) |
| Avg. Exec. Time | 20m44s (39m56s, 14m38s, 7m38s) |
| Successful runs | 3/3 |
AI agent using git-po-helper (JSON batch flow):
| Metric | Value |
|------------------|--------------------------------|
| Avg. Num turns | 56 (68, 39, 63) |
| Avg. Exec. Time | 19m8s (28m55s, 9m1s, 19m28s) |
| Successful runs | 3/3 |
The git-po-helper flow reduces the number of turns (86 → 56) with
similar execution time; the bottleneck appears to be LLM processing
rather than network interaction.
Signed-off-by: Jiang Xin <worldhello.net@gmail.com>
Add a new section to po/AGENTS.md to provide clear instructions for
updating language-specific PO files. The improved documentation
significantly reduces both conversation turns and execution time.
Performance evaluation with the Qwen model:
# Before: instructions in po/README.md; the custom prompt
# references po/README.md during execution
git-po-helper agent-test --runs=5 --agent=qwen update-po \
--prompt="Update po/zh_CN.po according to po/README.md"
# After: instructions in po/AGENTS.md; the built-in prompt
# references po/AGENTS.md during execution
git-po-helper agent-test --runs=5 --agent=qwen update-po
Benchmark results (5-run average):
| Metric | Before | After | Improvement |
|-------------|---------|--------|-------------|
| Turns | 22 | 4 | -82% |
| Exec. time | 38s | 9s | -76% |
| Turn range | 17-39 | 3-9 | |
| Time range | 25s-68s | 7s-14s | |
Signed-off-by: Jiang Xin <worldhello.net@gmail.com>
Add a new documentation file po/AGENTS.md that provides agent-specific
instructions for generating or updating po/git.pot, separating them
from the general po/README.md. This separation allows for more targeted
optimization of AI agent workflows.
Performance evaluation with the Qwen model:
# Before: No agent-specific instructions; use po/README.md for
# reference.
git-po-helper agent-test --runs=5 --agent=qwen update-pot \
--prompt="Update po/git.pot according to po/README.md"
# Phase 1: add the instructions to po/README.md; the prompt
# references po/README.md during execution
git-po-helper agent-test --runs=5 --agent=qwen update-pot \
--prompt="Update po/git.pot according to po/README.md"
# Phase 2: add the instructions to po/AGENTS.md; use the built-in
# prompt that references po/AGENTS.md during execution
git-po-helper agent-test --runs=5 --agent=qwen update-pot
Benchmark results (5-run average):
Phase 1 - Optimizing po/README.md:
| Metric | Before | Phase 1 | Improvement |
|-------------|---------|---------|-------------|
| Turns | 17 | 5 | -71% |
| Exec. time | 34s | 14s | -59% |
| Turn range | 3-36 | 3-7 | |
| Time range | 10s-59s | 9s-19s | |
Phase 2 - Adding po/AGENTS.md (further optimization):
| Metric | Before | Phase 2 | Improvement |
|-------------|---------|---------|-------------|
| Turns | 17 | 3 | -82% |
| Exec. time | 34s | 8s | -76% |
| Turn range | 3-36 | 3-3 | |
| Time range | 10s-59s | 6s-9s | |
Separating agent-specific instructions into AGENTS.md provides:
- More focused and concise instructions for AI agents
- Cleaner README.md for human readers
- An additional 11% reduction in turns and 17% reduction in execution
time
- More consistent behavior (turn range reduced from 3-7 to 3-3)
Signed-off-by: Jiang Xin <worldhello.net@gmail.com>
Jiang Xin