[FM Discuss] Portals for Russian and Spanish manuals?

[Daniel James]

Hi Edward,

> How about starting with buttons, and putting the menu below
> 
> English
> French
> Spanish
> Arabic
> Chinese
> MORE -->[long list]

The trouble with that last button is how we translate 'More' :-)

I'd suggest listing every language that has at least one completely
translated manual available. If a reader speaks that language, they will
understand that FM is available to them, and might participate in new
translations.

> We could have a submenu for the major international languages, including
> 
> English (UK, Commonwealth, US)
> French (Francophonie)
> Spanish (Spain, Latin America and more)
> Russian (Former Soviet Union)
> Arabic (Middle East and North Africa)
> Chinese Traditional (Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, others)
> Swahili (Kenya, Tanzania, others) [when the time comes]
> 
> and list the rest geographically by the countries where they are
> official or native.

The problem with that approach is that the official language in a
particular country is not necessarily the one for which the translation
is needed most. It's also a political issue in some countries. So I
suggest we forget about geography and just list the languages, starting
with the one that has the most translated books available, progressing
downwards to the least translated. That might encourage a little
friendly competition among translators, to get their language higher up
in the list :-)

People who speak a certain language will certainly recognise the name of
it in their own character set, even if they can read nothing else on FM.

Cheers!

Daniel