[FM Discuss] Vietnamese translations

[Lachlan Musicman]

Slightly off topic, I've often thought that the "Translating a Manual"
manual should be one of the first manuals that people attempt to
translate - to solve exactly the problem Clytie is having and that the
Plumi team faced in Indonesia - "low-resource language communities"

What are the options re some sort of grant or program that could
address this issue?

cheers

L.

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 01:34, Anne Gentle
<annegentle at justwriteclick.com> wrote:
> Hi - Glad you found us! Thanks for writing. I'll set up the OLPC manuals for
> translation this evening.
>
> There are a few "books" that will be of interest to you - those are remixed
> to create the online help that is supplied with the XOs.
>
> XO - for the hardware guide, http://en.flossmanuals.net/xo
> Sugar - for the operating system/learning platform,
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/sugar
>
> Activities guides are also available. The ones listed on the "READ" page are
> the most complete.
>
> Recently added:
> Make your own Sugar Activities - for programming Sugar activities
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/ActivitiesGuideSugar/Introduction
>
> I'll start with setting up the XO and Sugar manuals - let me know if you'd
> like to translate activities-related guides. I think the material is written
> with your audience in mind (those who may not have seen a computer.)
>
> Could you tell me the two-letter language code for Vietnamese?
>
> Thanks,
> Anne
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Clytie Siddall <clytie at riverland.net.au>
> wrote:
>>
>> G'day all :)
>>
>> I'm unaccustomed to translating docs out of PO/XLIFF format (e.g. in my
>> offline translation editor or on Pootle), so please excuse my ignorance of
>> how your site works. I didn't even know it existed before today, despite
>> being involved in quite a number of FLOSS projects. It's a bit like finding
>> out someone has suddenly declared a new country on the world map. I feel
>> slightly bewildered, but definitely interested.
>>
>> I was pointed to you via the OLPC Localization list. We've translated all
>> the OLPC files on the Sugar Pootle, but from OLPC-project feedback in
>> Vietnam, we definitely need translated manuals as well. As in many
>> low-resource language communities, Vietnamese users are overwhelmingly new
>> users, often people who have never seen a computer before. They need
>> manuals, instructions, cheat sheets and a helping hand from Providence.
>>
>> I gather you have the manuals. ;)
>>
>> So, not having enough sense to run in the other direction, I hereby
>> volunteer to translate the OLPC/Sugar/eToys/XO manuals into Vietnamese.
>>
>> This means I'll start at the beginning, and hope I have the resources to
>> work my way through. We are critically short of volunteers, but if I find
>> any, I'll do my best to get them involved. (Note: I am severely disabled and
>> often unable to read and write for long periods. I contribute whenever I
>> can. I've found, over time, that it adds up. Over five years it's added up
>> to the point that, in coming here, I've joined Yet Another Mailing List™,
>> something I swore I wouldn't do because I can't keep up with all the dratted
>> things. <sigh>)
>>
>> BTW, may I suggest that your FLOSS Manuals homepage also include a
>> Translate link, along with Read and Write? I had to click around your site
>> for a while before I found this page:
>>
>> http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManuals/TranslatingAManual
>>
>> I suggest having a drop-down Translate link (two items: Translation Zone
>> and Translation Help), or two separate links if we can't do drop-down. It
>> really helps to have clear directions. Tonight, if I weren't so stubborn, I
>> would have given up trying to find the translation info on your site, and
>> gone and done the next in my loooong list of translation tasks. I'm sure
>> you're just as busy. So a clear navbar on the front page definitely helps
>> both newcomers and repeat offenders, er, translators.
>>
>> Chris Leonard says they're reviewing the OLPC manuals this weekend. If you
>> have time to set one of them (basic Sugar system use?) up for me in the next
>> week or so, I would appreciate the help. I'm looking forward to finding out
>> how your site handles updates (RSS notifications and per-word diff in the
>> editor?), as I've found updates to be the biggest problem in maintaining doc
>> translations, if they're not in PO or XLIFF format.
>>
>> For reference, there is not yet an auto-translation for Vietnamese which
>> outputs anything but headache-causing gibberish. (Yup, time for another
>> sigh.)
>>
>> I haven't had a chance to play with your editor yet, but I hope it allows
>> download of backup files. I've found keeping a copy of translations done
>> externally saves much cursing later. Are there access restrictions? In other
>> words, can anyone register and edit my translations, or do they need to be
>> approved? Spam editing is becoming a problem online, and I'd like to avoid
>> it if possible. I can't find any other docs on your translation process
>> other than that one page, so sorry for all the questions. I've registered
>> (ClytieSiddall), and will explore as much as I can before I have an editable
>> doc.
>>
>> Also, I gather you don't have many languages represented yet. Vietnamese
>> is a test case for Unicode support, due to its wide range on the Unicode
>> plane and heavy use of combined diacritics. We may be in for "interesting
>> times". ;)
>>
>> from Clytie
>>
>> Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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