Re: Arabeyes Translation Teams.

["Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj" <aalarfaj at gmail dot com>]

On 7/31/06, Djihed Afifi <djihedlists at googlemail dot com> wrote:
[...]
> Please take this seriously, we took it upon ourselves to be The
> Ones(tm) when it came to Arabic translation, so we should live up to
> the responsibility, Arabeyes is always here, and will never go under.
> The actual task: the translation should be the end goal, not the
> popularity of a website or the dedication of a handful of team
> members. The current system is too high for many potential
> translators, we're not gaining anything from it, we're actually
> locking people out of the translation effort in the name of
> "dedication" and "commitment", a goal Arabeyes has not even achieved
> beyond a couple dozen or so part-time translators. We need to make
> things *work*, not to over analyse people's behaviour philosophically.
> May be I'm too much of a pragmatic person, I believe pragmatism is
> what we need ATM and ASAP.

I agree. We may have been keeping the level of entry a little too high
for most translators, but it was not intentional. We still have a lack
of enough translation standards, and not having this set of rules to
follow makes it harder for any newcomer who has just started
translating.

Having said that, I think we should note that we get around 1 new
translator signing up each week. And the system duly sends a welcome
message with an explanation of the first steps that should be made to
become a translator. The very first step, the zeroth step if you will,
is that a translator should at least make a post on a mailing list
with a simple introduction of himself.

The vast majority do not make that first step. I am not sure why or if
there is some kind of repellent to newcomers that is inherent in the
joining process.


> May be you're wondering what I'm expecting from this email. I'm
> expecting a revision of the whole translation process. Currently, new
> translators have to register to the website, read 99 manuals,
> subscribe to the mailing lists, get a CVS account (which means they
> have to be CLI masters). Remember, it's like a filter, every step in
> the way potentially discourages many people away. You require that
> level of dedication from may be core developers, or at most all
> developers, but not of every translator whose only interest is
> translating strings. After all, getting a CVS account and subs'ing to
> a mailing list is no guarantee for dedication, how many people have
> CVS accounts but are not or were never dedicated?


Although I would have disagreed with in the past maybe it is time for
a change. So, if no one has any objections, lets go about seeing HOW
we can review the translation process.


> I can hear you saying "but.... if we don't request them to do that
> they will not be dedicated", They don't even know how to do that,
> mate. Another would say: "... if we won't request that they read those
> 99 manuals they will bombard us with questions", to that I say, so
> what, let them ask, please drop the arrogant RTFM[1] attidude whenever
> someone asks a seemingly (to you) simple question, nobody was born a
> master. If somebody asks "How do you enable Arabic in windows", a bad
> answer would be to just give him a link to a 12 page manual, a good
> answer might be "You go to control panel, you do this ..etc, this is
> also explained here: link". We should win hearts first, if you win a
> heart, you win the mind.

I agree, and as far as I know, RTFM was never the attitude of anyone
here on Arabeyes, at least not intentionally. We always welcomed any
questions and we always will, ISA.


[...]
> Finally, after we fix our wrecked (in my opinion) translation and
> recruitment process, we should then think of real concrete steps to
> recruit more translators, I'll leave that after this discussion.

No worries. We do _not_ have a lack of new people signing up. We have
maybe a lack of people signing up and then following through. We could
try a bit of hand-holding at first to make the most of every new
sign-up.

Thanks a lot for the "rant". Its good to see someone with such genuine
inerest in the well-being of the translation process. Lets hope we can
make some good progress.

Abdulaziz,