Localisation (was Re: Translators needed?)

Jon Phillips jon at rejon.org
Thu Feb 1 01:32:21 CET 2007


On Wed, 2007-01-31 at 10:45 +0200, F Wolff wrote:
> On Di, 2007-01-30 at 20:41 +0100, José Suárez wrote:
> > Hi to everybody.
> > I've been quite excited about the OpenMoko development and release schedule. 
> > I'm pretty sure I would like to buy one Neo1973 when they were available and 
> > became usable.
> > I'm not a developer and don't know how to code, but I would like to contribute 
> > to the OpenMoko project to make it great. Given that the only way I think I 
> > could help at the moment is by translating some of the UI/GUI messages (later 
> > when the phone is out I would like to test the apps and report bugs) I want 
> > to know if there is any need for translators. If so, I would like to 
> > volunteer for the translation of whatever messages into Spanish.
> > 
> > Thanks for the effort and time you guys are putting into OpenMoko's 
> > development. It will surely rock!
> 
> 
> I work with Translate.org.za where we localise software for South
> Africa. I've been hoping that we can see a coordinated effort developing
> here in terms of localisation for the OpenMoko.
> 
> We work as part of the the WordForge project where we build tools to
> simplify software translation and localisation. All our software is Free
> and Open Source Software. Several translation teams all over the world
> have used our software, including the Translate Toolkit and Pootle, for
> projects such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, and the multitude
> of other Free and Open Source programs. We are also currently
> cooperating with Debian to adapt our software to fulfil their needs for
> a complete internationalisation/localisation infrastructure.
> 
> Pootle is an online system for translation management and online
> translation. For a demo, see our Pootle server at 
>   http://pootle.wordforge.org/
> 
> For more information about Pootle, consult our wiki:
>   http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/index
> 
> It can help to centralise translation activities and help translators to
> achieve higher quality translations. It is in active development and has
> an increasing community of localisers and developers helping to provide
> a tool that really helps translation teams, large and small. 
> 
> I hope we will consider localisation to be important and make it easy
> for developers and translators to contribute by using a system such as
> Pootle. 

I can also concur that pootle is useful. I would highly recommend using
it to open up the translation process more. We use it at
http://translate.creativecommons.org (even though we haven't properly
launched it yet).

> Another area of interest, is of course other types of localisable
> functionality, such as text input and fonts. Some ideas have been
> mentioned on the old list for text input. How language packs work would
> also need to be decided eventually - of course we are dealing with
> limited storage. I would personally love to hold such an open phone in
> my hand with all its power, and speaking my own language - something to
> be proud of! I hope it will be easy for everybody to make this happen.
> 
> Sean talked about "improbable markets" in the release roadmap. I don't
> know exactly what he had in mind, but good localisation is an excellent
> way to reach more people. It is probably not that difficult to provide
> some mobile "firsts" in certain languages / countries. It might get a
> lot of press as the first phone or first smart phone translated in some
> languages.
> 

Yes, I agree completely. I'm hopeful that this type of system could be
utilized for syncing the catalogs with the software in the
SVN/Repository trees so that there is not non-synchronized work
happening. (rhetorical) Could this be set up easily with an SVN
codebase?

Jon

> Friedel
> 
> Some useful links:
> Translate.org.za: http://translate.org.za
> WordForge: http://www.wordforge.org
> Our SourceForge page: http://translate.sourceforge.net/
> 
> 
> 
-- 
Jon Phillips

San Francisco, CA
USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org

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