[FM Discuss] Translations

[adam]

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On 05/25/2011 02:00 PM, Daniel James wrote:
> Hi Adam,
> 
>> Really nice you are offering to help with this
>> stuff
> 
> You're welcome :-) I have ideas for the graphics, see below...
> 
>> We have had the idea from the beginning that we will not start new
>> language portals unless there is someone to manage them.
> 
> That's very reasonable. Sourcefabric has staff speaking many languages -
> including Russian, Spanish, and Greek - that could help with that.

ok, cool. I dont want to be discouraging, apologies if I come across
that way, but the language management is quite  a big job. The idea is
to get people to build the languages - search for people to contrib, run
book sprints, do admin etc. Thats not to say we cant try it another way
but what I am concerned about is starting a language that then just dies
from lack of attention which is the case for the NL version of FM. So I
would rather that energy goes where there is a demonstrated passion for
building a community rather than 'just ' the translation of 1 manual or
2 manuals etc...thats why we have the translation zone *and* the
separate langs. As I said, nothing is really set in stone but there are
some things we would need to put our heads together on before embarking
on a new lang site.

> 
> I suggest the permanent solution is rather than using individual
> imagemaps, to include one 'menu bar' on all user-facing pages with
> context-sensitive buttons for the different languages. So if I'm an
> Arabic speaker who has followed a link to the English manual on
> bypassing censorship, the Arabic button will be 'lit up' in such a way
> that indicates a translation is available, and I can switch to Arabic
> with one click.
> 
> In the event that a translation for a particular manual doesn't exist
> yet, the link can go to a page in Arabic saying that translators are
> welcome, how to contribute etc. I think you'll soon get more
> translations started.
> 
> Also, rather than using the ISO language codes in the button graphic,
> which are probably not familiar to non-geeks, we could use the name of
> that language in the native character set.


yes. i like all of this. my questions now turn to more technical/design
implementation issues. It would be nice to get a group together to work
this out in a 1 day sprint. Its very much needed and i like the
bandwidth a face-to-face 'lets do it' meet up provides. Otherwise I
guess a good working process is to send some screenshots of what you
imagine and I can see if i can work out how to do it...

thanks daniel. this is all very helpful and also very encouraging to see
such +ve energy going towards this. its also good to get this
conversation going here too and see if others have ideas...

adam

> 
> The list of languages I'm aware of on FM is:
> 
> ar
> el
> en
> es
> fa
> fi
> fr
> hi
> id
> nl
> ru
> zh
> 
> If there any others, please let me know. German, Italian and Portuguese
> (for Brazil) would be good to have. Whatever scheme we come up with will
> have to be extensible, of course.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Daniel

- -- 


- --
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
Project Manager Booki
Book Sprint Facilitator
+49 01774935122


Please note: I am not usually online on weekends unless facilitating a
Book Sprint
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