http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary Re: Translators needed?

[Robert Michel]

Salve Engin!

I like your motivation and your will to find a some experienced in 
localisation/translation. You have the experiance with the 
localization of RSSOwl and that the help of 3 friends seems not to
be enought to reach a professional translation.

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, Engin Erenturk wrote:
> I think you got me wrong. I'm not against open translations, I know how wikipedia works, and I really believe thats the true way for many areas. What I want to say that, this is a phone and this phone can be used anyone... so the localizations must be done very carefully, because you have to tell the user the exact meaning or explanation of an icon, a small text, or a button. 

You are right, whe you are publishing it, you must be carefull.
I thought about to translate man pages into German, but I didn't
done it, because I saw this is to complecated - I don't find the
right words for 100%.
So when we have an open system, a translation into German would
be read by many people that I do not know - when they have a better
formulation they could change it  - maybe with a small comment 
why, maybe with a small hint where there have this expression from.

> This is what I'm facing at the Turkish of the devices I've got. Even some world brand devices have really bad localizations.For example I've a Sony handycam and the menu localization is terrible. I'm not saying that a pro must do this and no one can change it. I say, someone experienced in localization of this kind of devices can be very useful. 

Useful yes. A good friend of mine has one of his job at his company
to test software of mobiles for big companies... I'm telling him
about OpenMoko/Neo1973, but I do not try to get some help from him.
So manybe a professional translator does have some seperation of
business and freedomwork as well - I don't know.

I just tried to encorage you and other to do not think
"my skills are not good enough, we need a professional
for this.." no - OpenMoko is a training field where you
can join for fun, for getting some new skills, for supporting
this project and the reposablility of a good translation will
not belongs to you - it will belongs to the community.

When somebody take the time and did a translation as good as he
could - and nobody who read this will make some improvements
- then the others are reponsable for the bad localization.

Having very low barrier/hurdle to support this project is very
important - I hope everybody will be surprised what he could
contribute and how easy it was...

So I didn't want to stop you - I only tried to motivate and encourage
that everybody has skills good enough to contribute 
- no professional skills needed :)

best wishes from Aachen,
rob