Candidacy Kenneth C.

[Kenneth Christiansen <kenneth gnu org>]

Hi all,

My name is Kenneth Christiansen- Some might know me, some maybe don't. 

I have been with the Gnome project from around the beginning, actually
I think from the Gnome 0.12 release. Then, I wasn't very much involved in
the project apart from reporting bugs, fixing build errors, etc.
 
After a while, I figured out that it was possible to translate Gnome into
Danish, and I started to do so. At the beginning I was quite lousy, but as
time went by, I became very good and I developed some good ways for
handling the whole translation process. This also lead to fixing of
applications for i18n, writing various scripts that would make the
translation work easier to maintain.
  
The months up to Gnome 1.2 were some of the hardest months of my life.
I spent time making sure programs ran, reporting bugs, helping test
programs, drawing graphics and sharing my opinions with others as well
as translation work. For the first time, I managed to make a full 
translation of Gnome, which I could be proud of.
 
Things are still far from perfect and a lot of time is required to go
through all the translations, etc. in order to improve them, but most
importantly, not many people in the Gnome Community are seriously thinking
about the translation work. You can have all your translations 100%, but
then while you are sleeping, new strings are added, and the next morning you 
see a new release of a now only 90%-translated module. This may even be a
module that will not see a new release for another three months -- or longer.
 
This means that people will almost always be running a Gnome which is at
best 90% translated! Also, Helix, Red Hat and others  all patch the Gnome
TAR releases, and the result become even worse.
 
I know that if we want Gnome to become a real competitor to products
like the ones that come from Microsoft, we need to ensure that this gets
fixed. If our *supported* languages are of a quality lower than that of,
for instance, Microsoft, then we risk not being taken seriously.
 
We cannot let institutions like schools and universities run Gnome when
10% of the strings present in Gnome are untranslated. Untranslated strings
also tend to look very unprofessional.
 
This is not something we can solve immediately, but if I become a member
of the board I will be a representative from all the translators and try
to solve some of these problems, so that we all can get a good localized
Gnome - one to be proud of!

Kenneth Christiansen