Re: New Tajik Gnome Translation Team

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Hi Roger,
Welcome to the GNOME Localisation Project!

Some tips additional to the welcome pack provided by Christian:
The "compilation" tools for PO files (msgfmt) are available in Linux by 
default (most distributions).
There are also Win32 versions at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gettext

There is a script you can use to grab all the PO files from

http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.14/tg/
for easy distribution. However, note that these files change as GNOME develops.
Near the release time of GNOME 2.14 (around March 2006?) there will be a period
called "string freeze" where strings are guarranteed not to change, 
so translators can work with peace of mind.
Therefore, you can plan to complete the current collection of PO files now
and in April work on the remaining messages.
Uncompressed the files are currently 3.6MB (just 435KB if compressed: ~2 minutes on 33Kbps).

To grab the PO/POT files, you can use the following commands:
1. wget -O desktop.html 
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.14/tg/desktop/index.html
2. wget -O developer-libs.html 
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.14/tg/developer-libs/index.html

These commands download the HTML pages from the statistics site. These 
pages
contain links to the actual PO/POT files, they are updated a few times 
per day.

3. grep '.pot' desktop.html developer-libs.html | awk -F\" '{print $6}' 
| sort | uniq | awk '{printf "wget 
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.14/tg/desktop/%s\n";, $1}' | sh
4. grep '.tg.po' desktop.html developer-libs.html | awk -F\" '{print 
$6}' | sort | uniq | awk '{printf "wget 
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.14/tg/desktop/%s\n";, $1}' | sh

These commands identify the translation files (either PO or POT) from 
the statistics pages and create URLs to be used to download the 
individual files.
If the process is difficult to use, feel free to ask me to send those 
files in a compressed package.

All the best,
Simos

Christian Rose wrote:

> 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
>