Re: New Tajik Gnome Translation Team

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

On 11/11/05, Roger Kovacs <rkovacs khujand org> wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
>   I subscribed to this list a short time ago to prepare for our
> announcement to establish a Tajik Gnome translation team.
> I will be the facilitator, providing a continuity for the various
> volunteer translators throughout Tajikistan.  This is the formal
> request to establish the interface with the Gnome project.
>
>   Just a little background is appropriate - my name is Roger Kovacs, and
> I have been involved with the Tajik LInux Translations for about 5 years
> now.  We have made great progress on Mandriva, KDE, and KOffice (maybe I
> shouldn't have said that here).  Now it is time to begin working Gnome
> with a focus.  The structure of our team is very unusual, but is proven
> in previous projects, and is an effective method (considering the
> circumstances.)  The most unusual part is that I do not know much of
> the Tajik language.  One of the main issues in Tajikistan is that a
> 33Kb/s internet connection costs about 2 annual salaries per month of
> service ($250US).  A little bit expensive for the typical volunteer or
> even a non-profit organization.  So having a full time internet
> connection in the USA, I e-mail .po files to translators (after doing a
> rough 'automated' translation) who use KBabel to do the translations,
> and when I get them back, I do a little quality control, verification,
> and "compile" them into .mo files which I send back to the translator
> for a final check.  Upon the ok, I check them into the configuration
> management system.  At times, when there is funding, and an
> organization called Youth Opportunities (www.tajikngo.org) will also
> have configuration management system access and can provide
> administration of the translation process. So my main role is to
> provide continuity and allow for continuous progress via e-mail for the
> volunteer translators. As progess is made in Tajikistan, a transition to
> native translation coordinator will be accomplished. [FYI - typical
> monthly salary in Tajikistan is about $10US, but I guess you figured
> that out by now.]
>
>   Oh yes there are issues with this method, as it is very difficult to
> share the translation database to develop standard terms, although  I
> try to do this twice a year.  In addition, new releases are shipped to
> Tajikistan on CD via DHL only a couple times per year, so they are
> usually working behind the latest release. (Mail gets pilfered, so the
> expense of DHL is necessary.)  It is amazing how much the development
> process is dependent on the internet, and we just take it for granted.
>
>   As an emerging nation, Tajikistan needs Linux and open source
> applications due to the current economic conditions.  The only computer
> system in the Tajik language today is Linux.  Linux is now being
> accepted by the schools for education.  Soon Tajikistan may be a nation
> that will not need to migrate to Linux, but rather have evolved into
> using Linux as the only option.
>
>   I am certain with the support of the Gnome community, the team will
> have great success.  I look forward to your comments on getting
> started, suggesting initial priorities for translations.  I'll also
> probably need some assistance as I set up a build environment to
> compile .mo files.  Suggestions and ideas are always welcome!

Support for Tajik (tg) is most welcome in GNOME. I've added your name
and e-mail address to the teams page at
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/teams.html now. Please verify
that this listing is correct.

I'll also send a mail in private to you with a request for Bugzilla
details. Please reply to that mail as soon as possible.

Other than that, please ask around on this mailing list or at the IRC
channel #i18n on irc.gnome.org if you need help getting started. An
introduction to the translation process can be found at
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/l10n-guide/ .

For a new team, starting with translating GNOME 2.13, that will soon
(see the time scheme at http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointThirteen) become
GNOME 2.14, is the best thing to do right now. You can find a list of
included software at
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.14/tg/ under the "desktop" and
"developer-libs" sections. Those are the things to translate for full
support of the official GNOME release.

Once you have translated some of these pot files, you can send the
resulting po files to someone with cvs access and they can try to put
them into cvs for you. Just make sure that the files pass the "msgfmt
-cv tg.po" test, that they are encoded in UTF-8, and that you compress
them using gzip before attaching them to the mail.
If you are having trouble finding someone that can commit the files
for you, try asking on the #i18n IRC channel, or on this list.

Once you've contributed a few translations this way, we can arrange a
cvs account for you, so that you can put translations directly into
cvs later on.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions!


Thanks, and welcome,

Christian