Hi,
Last release, we had a "string freeze" once we hit RC1. This meant that any clarifications/clean-ups/etc. to any user-facing text (help messages, form labels, etc.) were 'frozen' and couldn't be altered after RC1 was released, in order to give translators ample time to translate Drupal.
I'm all for a string freeze like the last time. Keeping the string freeze date in mind helped us get a lot of UI text fixes in which improved overall usability.
b) Is RC1 enough time? If we set it at beta-2 or something would that allow us to include a few translations in Drupal core itself by RC1?
I am a translator as well (German translation) and I think it was enough time to complete at least the most important parts of it. I'd like to propose something else, though: While translating, I get to read all the help text included in Drupal, and I noticed that most of those help texts are not very well written and even include factual errors (e.g. removed features, no mention of newly added features etc.). I'd like to cast a kind of "user interface text team" that especially takes care of such issues. We could for example set up a site with Drupal 6, enable locale module and use it to modify the english strings (english -> english "translation"). After we've fixed those strings, we can create patches against HEAD. Not sure if that's a good/practiable solution. Any suggestions? Konstantin Käfer – http://kkaefer.com/