Re: Albanian and Turkmen Teams

[Laurent Dhima <laurent dhima tin it>]

Dear Mehmet Ali Erdal

Ditėn e Mėr, 3 Mar 2004 00:05:10 +0200
"Mehmet Ali Erdal" <maerdal@istanbulconsulting.net> ka shkruar:

EPEBLEIGIODFJJAIMDACCEDHCAAA.maerdal@istanbulconsulting.net
MAE> We are a Turkish software development company and willing to take part in
MAE> the Gnome Translation Project.
MAE> 
MAE> We are mainly focused on developing multitier applications and localization
MAE> of open source national operating systems and applications (like Linux open
MAE> office) in several languages such as Turkmen, Albanian and Sudanese. We
MAE> believe that the initial and most challenging part of this task is to
MAE> convince the governments of these countries for the usage of these operating
MAE> systems and applications in public offices and organizations.It is clear
MAE> that in the developing countries, computer usage begins in public
MAE> organizations and than reach to the private end users. The second phase is
MAE> the developing and localization part which is relatively easy.
MAE> 
MAE> For our project The Turkish Republic Under Secretariat of Treasury granted
MAE> us a financial support accreditation certificate of about 1 million USD in
MAE> the context of supporting information technologies and their implementation
MAE> processes. We also have the support of several foreign investors willing to
MAE> invest in these developing countries in various areas from IT to
MAE> construction and they aim to strengthen their relationships with these
MAE> countries by providing them these OS___s and applications in their own
MAE> languages and without charging any license fees and thus creating a gain
MAE> convenient to the public interest. Our investors have high level
MAE> governmental contacts and they are eligible to convince these governments in
MAE> this subject. We as Istanbul Consulting have developed solutions in these
MAE> countries before for governmental organizations and public offices and we
MAE> are familiar with the procedures of these countries.
MAE> 

I take pleasure in the fact that someone from "abroad" is willing to assist us in our quest to sensitize public administrations, universities etc., to financial profit and to the freedom created as a result of the usage of Operating Systems and Open Source Software.

MAE> In this context we want to start the Sudanese Team, become the coordinator
MAE> of Turkmen and Sudanese teams and contribute to the Albanian Team. Our
MAE> meetings with the investors and government officials of these countries are
MAE> going on at the very moment and we actually believe that becoming the
MAE> coordinator of all these three teams will strengthen our position against

Regarding the project on the adoption of Desktop GNOME in Albanian (gnome-albanian), we do not have "millions of dollars" and the money covering the expenses comes mainly out of our own pockets. However, this has not influenced and will never influence the process or the quality of the translations.

As probably other translation groups, we also welcome and are willing to accept every kind of cooperation in translating or other kinds of help and, for the time being, we do not feel a necessity to change the structure or the work methodology.

MAE> Thanks in Advance,
MAE> Mehmet Ali Erdal

High regards,
-----------------------------
	Laurent Dhima
Linux shtepi 2.6.0.lenti #1 Fri Jan 23 01:54:45 CET 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
	http://www.alblinux.net
	http://gnome-albanian.sourceforge.net/