Re: Starting Sudanese Team

[Arafat Medini <lumina silverpen de>]

Hi to all,

I AM VERY SHOKED about this thread.

can someone tell me what Arabic in Sudan is ?
In Sudan as in Every other Arabic country only Arabic is spoken.

Am Fre, den 05.03.2004 schrieb Christian Rose um 00:08:
> tor 2004-03-04 klockan 12.31 skrev Barış Yoluç:
> > As we mentioned our efforts are of two fold. Developing and widening.
> > By Sudanese (not as language, as nationality) we ment Arabic.

I am the Arabic gnome maintainer, and there is no other who will work on
Arabic gnome, I think you are kidding!!!

please refer to http://www.arabeyes.org to know about the Arabeyes group
working in the Arabic region.

If you want to help us pls contact as like linux kuwait or the KACST
universtiy did.

> Ok, so the locale you want to support is "ar_SD" (Arabic in Sudan). That
> certainly makes it much clearer.

There is NO Arabic in Sudan. All the Arabic countries speak plain
Arabic!

> > However as our contacts are in Sudan and our aim is to convince the
> > Sudanese Government to make this OS their national OS and distribute
> > this free of licese to the end users we wanted to start a Sudanese
> > team. We don't know how it will be possible according to your team
> > structures and appreciate any suggestions (as if it is possible to
> > create a subteam under arabic "language team" or not.).  

I REALLY doubt this, the Arabeyes group tried so much to make Linux in Arabic
countries popular but there are many problems, are leader is from Sudan
btw!!!
To help us join http://www.arabeyes.org. Like everyone is doing out
there.

> This is not usually how things are done with translations in free
> software projects. We only create subgroups of languages for certain
> countries if they are needed; that is, if there are enough lingustic
> differences to warrant it, and developer manpower to support it.
> As an example, there are very few differences between de_DE (German as
> spoken in Germany) and de_AT (German as spoken in Austria), at least in
> writing. So there's not much point in seperating the two and have two
> seperate translation efforts in parallel. Having a single German effort
> helps both the development and also the users, as both de_DE and de_AT
> users will get the same 'de' translations. Seperating the translation
> efforts would mean that one translation effort would always lag behind
> the other, and not be a very effective use of translator resources.
"Arabic sudanese" is only a dialect, the Arabic consciousness
understands Arabic as THE DEFACTO language of all the Arabs.

THis is very important to understand as the goverenments in ALL arabic
countries use the SAME Arabic.
Sudanese politicians don't use sudanese dialect!S! for their ministries.

> Then again, there are some languages that due to seperation, both
> geographically, culturally and politically, have gone seperate ways in
> different countries, and resulted in substantial linguistic differences.
> The most wellknown example of that are of course pt_BR (Portuguese as
> spoken in Brazil) and pt_PT (Portuguese as spoken in Portugal), and also
> en_US, en_CA, and en_GB. For such languages there may be wellgrounded
> lingustic reasons for having seperate translation efforts.
This is not applicable for Arabic as said.
I can start here a whole thread about modern Arabic etc.
 But this is not the purpose of the list I would suppose.
> 
> Many countries in the world use Arabic as the language, and we already
> have an Arabic team in the GTP. Thus, I do not see the point in creating
> a seperate translation team for ar_SD, unless there are substantial
> linguistic differences between "common" Arabic and the Arabic spoken in
> Sudan. Unless you can give some proof that this should be the case, I
> strongly urge you to cooperate with the existing Arabic translation team
> in improving the Arabic support.
We did too much research in this field  and let me then spill some
beans:

there are three forms of Arabic:
the quranic arabic
modern arabic
dialect.

quranic arabic is the basis of the languages development from the 15th
century till today, modern Arabic which is to 99% identical to quranic
arabic is the STANDARD in media, education, and everything official in
the WHOLE arabic world with NO exception.
Even normal ppl believe that everyone having any look is Arabic if he
speaks fluently modern arabic.
and dialects which are NOT used in any official field and which as any
other dialect differ from one region to another.

> Note that this decision is, and should be, just based on a language
> level and lingustic merits -- that your company may have special
> business interests with the government of Sudan is very much irrelevant
> to the question of whether the GNOME Translation Project should have a
> seperate ar_SD team, at least from the GTP perspective.
> 
I am very pragmatic if they want to sell or/and make money ;) they can do it,
but if they want to contribute they can contact us, some ppl from saudi
arabia also want to make some paid ppl work on fedora translation for
eg.
So contact us. Well it would have been wiser to contact me instead of
going directly into this list.

> > > Also, for the coordinator role as any other position in a larger
> > free
> > > software project, we expect the holders of those positions to act as
> > > individuals, and not as the representatives for any corporate
> > interest,
> > > such as the companies that may employ these individuals.
> >  
> > Again as we mentioned before we fully support your aim of "a larger
> > free software project" and don't intend to obtain any commercial gain 
> > from the sales of the outcome. We gave a detailed information about
> > our intensions and our special company structure and I assure you
> > being a company has no difference in our situation than being an
> > individual. You can also accept "Mehmet Ali Erdal" as the coordinator
> > if it is more appropriate for you.
> 
> Thank you, I have noted now that Mehmet Ali Erdal
> <maerdal@istanbulconsulting.net> wants to volunteer as coordinator for
> an ar_SD team. But that team is still hypotethical at this point; we
> shouldn't create it until we are absolutely sure it's needed. So I'd
> really like to hear some facts on whether there are substantial
> differences between "common" Arabic and the one spoken in Sudan. I'd
> also like to hear the opinion of the existing Arabic team coordinator
> (cc:ed) on that matter.
> 
> In case there isn't any substantial differences, I strongly urge you to
> cooperate with the existing Arabic team in improving the Arabic
> translation support. I'm sure your help is *most* welcome!
> 

I am AGAINST such a move there is NO reason to make such a group.

+This group DOES NOT help arabic translation by forking it. Because
Arabic is Arabic, that's it!!!!

+There isn't ANY reason for supporting a dialect, like here in germany
we can't make offical groups for friesisch or bavarian for eg.

+In Sudan the OFFICIAL organ uses standard modern Arabic the statement
of supporting the government is not true.
We have our own ppl in Sudan, Linux is spread in Sudan as in every
coutnry outa there.

+Arabic has it's coordinator: ME, and it has it's supporting group:
"Arabeyes"


yours
Arafat elMedini

p.s: this is a joke really, if ppl wnat to help they have to contact the
maintainers, why are were here then ?!!!