Re: Gnome Internationalization: A proposal

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

I think it may be a good idea, and I am willing to look into how to do
it. I have some thoughts about how to do it.

However this is probably only interesting for some languages, the ones
where you miss a lot of translations. What is needed for some other
languages is a lot better quality assurance, that terms are used
consistantly, thet texts are translated correctly, that the language is
not too technical (english-like) that the shortcuts are not duplicated
(&a meand two things etc). For languages in that situation random
translators would actually probably worsen the situation.

Anyway I think it is useful for languages like yours, and other
languages that I am a little involved in.

I will return to this subject when I have a little more concrete.

keld

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 02:46:25PM -0600, Edward Mbugua Kamau wrote:
> Hi
> 
> This may be completely offbase but it may not. As a non technical Gnome
> User I have been looking for ways to contribute and I hit on translating
> Gnome. However, there appears to be no team for my language (Kiswahili)
> and I don't know anybody else who both speaks the language and uses
> Gnome. However, there are plenty of people who speak the language but
> use an inferior OS, which will remain nameless. I thought that perhaps
> those people could be involved in translating Gnome. Here is my
> proposal.
> 
> 
> Proposal
> The Gnome community set up a database of all the translatable strings in
> all the pot(?) files.That database should then be made web accessible,
> so that language speakers can view the text to be translated, over the
> internet and enter their translations directly on the website.These
> translations would then be vetted by the specific language team and they
> would decide what makes it into the pot files.If no team exists then the
> transaltions would be left online and eventually would form a basis for
> translation when a team appears.
> 
> 
> Benefits
> I see a number of benefits to this.
> 
> 1. Teams could be much smaller since they would have the assistance of a
> large base of language speakers. This would especially benefit those
> languages which are sparsely represented in the Gnome user base.
> 
> 2. The website would form a meeting point for speakers of a language,
> who may then go on to form translation teams or join existing teams.
> 
> 3. People take ownership of whatever they participate in and contribute
> to. People who might never use Gnome may begin to use it simply because
> they have been helping out with translations on the website. 
> 
> 4. It will increase the opportunity for Gnome users to give back to the
> community. People who may not be willing to make the commitment to work
> on a translation team, may be quite willing to do some translations
> whenever the mood takes them.
> 
> 5. It may result in better quality translation (more eyes, more heads
> (mouths?) etc).
> 
> 
> Apologies if this is totally impractical from a technical standpoint.I
> am not a programmer, but it seems doable to me. I would just like to put
> this out there for more competent folks to look at.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> Edward M. Kamau
> More Power to Gnome
>  
> 
>