hi again

[gar <gar at arabink dot com>]

Sorry, the previous message should have gone to the general list.  
Newbie here.

Regarding documentation and translation, I propose the following for 
discussion:

1.  adopting the TMX standard for translation memory.  See 
http://www.lisa.org/tmx/tmx.htm
2.  adopting the XLIFF standard for intermediate translation documents. 
 See http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=xliff
3.  adopting the TBX standard for terminology databases.  See 
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=xliff

These are open, XML-based standards.  They're relatively new, so there 
isn't a lot of software out there to support them, but since they are 
XML standards one can do a lot with standard XML tools.  I've been 
working with a closed source tool (for lack of an alternative) that 
supports these standards and I see lots of possibilities there.  See 
http://www.heartsome.net (I have no relation with the company, I just 
like their tools and so far there are no free alternatives.)

This mostly concerns document translation reuse; there seem to be quite 
a few good tools available for *.po translation.  But I see translation 
of core documents, like the various XML standards docs, R5RS, the core 
GNU documents, etc. as very important for the arabization effort and 
these XML standards would be very helpful in minimizing the amount of 
work by supporting reuse of good translations.  And even with the .po 
tools, there is surely a lot of duplicated effort.  Ideally there 
should be a single Translation Memory database for all strings 
associated with the various open source projects.  TMX and TBX could go 
a long way in making this happen.

What I would envision eventually is a TMX/TBX-based Translation Memory 
database hosted by arabeyes.org, which any translator could tap into 
(with the right tools) to reuse translated segments produced by the 
community.

As for my own translation projects, I expect to start work soon on 
Subversion and tortoiseSVN (both at http://subversion.tigris.org).  I 
know, tortoiseSVN is a windows client, but I don't have much choice in 
the matter, I have to use windows at work.  And besides, it's not 
really about GNU/Linux, it's about free software, and Subversion and 
tortoiseSVN are both free.

Beyond that, I'll be looking into translating XML material.  Haven't 
decided what yet; either basic technical docs (like the standard doc 
itself) or more user-oriented documentation.  Suggestions?

Ciao,

Gregg Reynolds


G. Reynolds