Salam, This is intended to all translators involved in Fedora, whether they are involved for Arabic or any other language. It is also intended for the people who shape the policies and tools used by and for the translators. To all Arabeyes members who are involved in translations, I would strongly advise you to join the fedora translation list [1] to voice your opinions, in order to allow the Fedora maintainers to better understand our requirements. Introduction ------------ Fedora recently announced [2] a new system which nullifies pre-existing language translation teams. This is not to say that they had such an explicit policy, in the past but they are now saying that it is definitely not the policy. What do they want to do then? They want to have translator per module. What does this mean? Simple. There is module A that translator X can take, translate, release. Translator Y comes along, takes A, translates, releases. The same goes for modules B, C, etc. Sounds good, eh? More people can easily contribute. What this will result in is complete and utter chaos. Allow me to elaborate. The Loss of Consistency ----------------------- There will be absolutely no conherence among translations. Each translator, depending on their language skills will have their own interpretation of strings. They will also have their own vocabulary that will most certainly conflict with someone else's in the overall translation. The Loss of Quality Control --------------------------- Since there is no group overseeing the quality of the translation, there are no assurances that the quality of translation is up to any standard. So who says what is standard? In the case of Arabic, the Arabeyes Project [3] has set up a committee (Quality Assurance Comittee [4]) that is specifically tasked with overseeing such standardizations across all translation projects. This is something that other projects can learn from. However, with such a scheme standards published by the QAC have no means of being implemented. The Loss of Communication ------------------------- Since there is no group, each individual translator is on their own island with their own ideas of how things should be done. This does not affect Fedora alone. This affects how Arabic is translated across a variety of localized applications and libraries. This additionally creates a very serious problem for a large project, like Arabeyes. For example, in order to perform CVS sync's, the maintainer now has to manually see what module he still has control over and what modules he does not. In other words, a 5 minutes job will now take 50 minutes. The Loss of a Community ----------------------- This scheme completely obliterates the sense and spirit of a community. In the case of Arabic, this took very hard long years to build and foster. With such a scheme, this community no longer needs to exist and is simply put back to an individual doing a couple strings and going home forgetting about the work he/she has modified. The Loss of Credit ------------------ Arabeyes has taken great pains to ensuring that credit is given to each and every individual who has contributed in any way, shape or form. With the current scheme, this is no longer guaranteed. Conclusion ---------- Past experiences from projects such as KDE, GNOME, Mandrake, etc. should be a good reference point to anyone outlining a localization policy for a project of the size of Fedora. Fedora's point of view is, if a team maintainer is needed, we can do that, as long as no one objects. However, it is not clear as to what would be done if someone objects for no reason. I can simply sit there on the list and object to every maintainer who comes up, just in spite of the project. Would that be taken seriously? What if I have a personal agenda against an individual? Would that suffice? What if, what if? These questions do not have answers yet. It is our hope that this policy would be reviewed and discussed with the community of the many language teams and individual translators, before it is being made as policy. We also hope that this would result in a more reasonable policy that accounts to the fact that some languages already indeed have a large set of translators and contributors who are organized and structured. It is also our hope that other language teams of translators would join us in our plea to Fedora to re-consider this policy. References ---------- [1] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-trans-list/ [2] https://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2004-June/msg00046.html [3] http://www.arabeyes.org/ [4] http://wiki.arabeyes.org/QAC -- ------------------------------------------------------- | Mohammed Elzubeir | Visit us at: | | | http://www.arabeyes.org/ | | Arabeyes Project | Homepage: | | Unix the 'right' way | http://elzubeir.fakkir.net/ | -------------------------------------------------------
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature