Re: GNOME shell i18n

[Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress gmail com>]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 4:28 AM, F Wolff <friedel translate org za> wrote:
>
> Hi everybody
>
> GNOME 3.0 came and went, and i18n seemed to never be a goal of GNOME
> 3.0. I'm hoping things can improve in future releases, so I'm trying to
> follow up on some bugs that affect i18n that I have reported before
> which haven't received attention yet.
>
> In which cases are we allowed to fix i18n issues or other errors in the
> source text ourselves? Even in a case with a patch supplied in Bugzilla
> I'm not necessarily getting a response. Of course everybody is busy, but
> it seems that some i18n issues are simply ignored while other things are
> getting attention, so I'm wondering to what extent we can still count on
> good i18n being an important project goal and hold developers to it just
> as we can for usability, security or other important issues.
>
> As a case in point, can people speaking other languages please comment
> on this bug?
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644090
> Particularly the use/non-use of plurals is worrying to me, even though
> it doesn't affect Afrikaans as badly as it affects other languages (as
> far as I know).
>
> Keep well
> Friedel


Speaking on behalf of a dowstream currently working on about 130
languages and dialects and distributing a Sugar / GNOME dualboot to
well over one million users around the world, but most especially to
non-English speakers, I must speak in support of Friedel's concerns
that i18n issues should be addressed as a high priority.  I'm
confident that all of you share the same sentiment to some degree.

It is my experience that the i18n / L10n focused community members
(like all of us on this list) need to speak up and make their voices
and concerns heard by the developers, who are often deeply (and
productively)  focused on technical advancement.  It is for the good
of the overall project as proper i18n has the potential to vastly
multiply the potential "customer base" of  the software and is a key
element in winning over new users in other languages.  FOSS
developer's are generally responsive to arguments that get their work
in the hands of more people and it is sometimes just a matter of
education and gentle poking to get these issues addressed.  The task
of doing that education and poking falls to the i18n team members.

I see Friedel's posting in that light as a call to the i18n community
for proactive engagement with the developers to make the needs of the
language communities we represent by proxy heard and I am supportive.

cjl
volunteer Sugar Labs / OKLPC / eToys Pootle admin