[FM Discuss] translation of manuals and software interface localization

[Janet Swisher]

While I'm not part of a translation community, it seems to me that the
answer is very much "it depends": on your goals for the manual, on the
project's goals, on your level of involvement with the larger project,
and on technical capability and commitment, to name a few. In some
cases, completing the software localization must come before
translating the manual. In other cases, there may be an urgent need
for translating the manual, even if the project localization is
incomplete.

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Tomi Toivio <tomi at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is a bit of a meta-FM question, since it goes beyond the scope of FM
> itself, but this is still quite important when we talk about translating
> manuals, since the localization project should be finished before we can
> translate a manual properly.
>
> What do other people translating FM manuals do with missing, bad or
> incomplete interface localizations? The manual just doesn't look too good if
> some or all of the program interface is in English.
>
> I tend to run into localization issues all the time when translating/writing
> manuals, but it seems like too much extra work to go and download some .po
> file, translate it and try to submit it. However, if the localization is
> done on a wiki-like platform such as Launchpad or Translatewiki, it becomes
> quite easy to localize some strings as required by the manual translation
> project.
>
> In the case of OpenStreetMap I just went to Translatewiki
> and http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Contributions/Tomi_Toivio but
> still it is not possible to translate all of the software interfaces shown
> in the manual there, it only has Potlatch 2 and the OSM website, but no JOSM
> or mobile editors, dunno where those are localized.
>
> Just a little poll, what do people working with non-English manuals think:
>
> 1) Localization isn't a part of writing manuals in FM, it should be ignored
> 2) Go and translate at least the strings that are visible in the manuals
>
> --
> Best Regards
> Tomi Toivio
> Open Source Coordinator
> http://fi.flossmanuals.net/
> tomi at flossmanuals.net
> +358453536625
>
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