Questions on starting a Singhi (sd) translation team (Was: Re: Need help in translating in new language)

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Frοm "asim wagan" <asim wagan gmail cοm>
> Hi,
> I am interested in supporting sindhi language for gnome. I need some 
help on how to do it  in gnome. Language code for sindhi is [sd]. It is 
written similarly like arabic > script , some work is already gone into 
developing some crude fonts. So I have really start from scratch for this.
>
> Asim

Hi Asim,
Sorry for top-posting, I do not have the original e-mail handy.

I notice that the Sindhi language is described at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sindhi_language
http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_iso639.asp?code=sd

As you mention, Sindhi uses the Arabic script 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sindhi_language#Writing_system).
You will need to have a look at the Arabic support section (all four 
files) in the Unicode standard at
http://www.unicode.org/charts/
and identify the 52 letters of the alphabet. As the Wikipedia article 
shows all the letters,
this indicates that all Sindhi glyphs are standardised in Unicode.

There are several Arabic fonts; you will need to find one that covers 
all of the Sindhi characters.
For some pointers on Arabic fonts (they are "Arabic" fonts with good 
coverage that include letters for Sindhi as well), see
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/arabic.html
http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Fonts_SindhiA.html
Then, you'll need to make a keyboard layout so that you can type Sindhi.
Simply look the Arabic keyboard layout and duplicate for Sindhi.
Search for a "symbols" directory on your Linux box; in there there 
should be an "ar" (or "ara") keyboard layout file for Arabic.
Copy to "sd" and modify accordingly for Sindhi.
The upstream location (that is, the developing location) of the Arabic 
layout is hosted at
http://webcvs.freedesktop.org/xlibs/xkbdesc/symbols/ara?view=markup
Once you make a new Sindhi layout, you can choose to send it to the 
"upstream" project
so that all new Linux distributions will have Sindhi and users can write 
in your language.
For this, you need to file a report similar to
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4818 to have the layout 
included.

To sum up, you need to have a way to write comfortable in Sindhi so that 
you can do translations.
Once you achieve the writing support, you can start translating files from
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.16/yo/desktop/index.html
(this URL is from another language; when you submit your first 
translation, you will
get a Sindhi page to track your work)
and notify this list once you have work done. Someone from the list will 
submit your work for you.
Once you have completed an amount of work, the translator admin of this 
list can propose you
to get your own account to submit translations directly.

To translate the above files in Sindhi, you can use an editor such as 
poEdit (www.poedit.org) or
KBabel (included in the "kdesdk" package).

Sorry if this is information overload :)
Feel free to ask any question.

Simos