My 0.02 I didn't post here since long ago. I'm not ranting or flaming anyone. I'm just stating some of the wrong things we (And I share this responsibility) did. On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 02:31:14PM +0100, Djihed Afifi wrote: [...] > 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 and I always talked about that. Asking the translators to deal or interact with CVS and/or bugzilla/gnats (Our bug tracking system) is bad. AFAICT, You must know CVS and request a CVS account by submitting a bug request to get it. Also using only PO files is bad. I understand that 99% of the FOSS projects use PO files but let's take an example: When we started translating Action Apps, The files were php files not PO files. We spent a hell lot of time to convert them to PO files. What's wrong with using the original formats ? I also guess that using pootle (Or some other web translation interface) might prove useful. I can't tell as this is something we didn't try. I can set up a pootle (Or whatever tool) on my website to test and see. The problem is that it won't know about the translations committed to the CVS. We also need a technical glossary. This is IMHO a must. The word lists project contains a lot of words but it's not that useful. Maybe we can also try to use programs other than kbabel. poedit works under windows. Maybe we can convince some windows users to help the openoffice translation for example. > 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? I wrote my reply before I reach this point. It's cool to find someone sharing the same thoughts. I'd also say that we drop all the development projects. Concentrate on translation and testing FOSS applications for Arabic support. Report bugs (and maybe try to fix them if we have resources) and interact with various projects developers. > 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. Even if someone comes and translates 10 strings then decided to quit. We gained the 10 strings and we gained him as he might return back. There's also something: The "Don't ever use cp1256 encoding" attitude. I don't understand what's wrong with cp1256 ? It's a well known encoding. If I write an email in cp1256 and all the headers are fine. I guess it's not a sin. -- GNU/Linux registered user #224950 Proud Egyptian GNU/Linux User Group <www.eglug.org> Member. Life powered by Debian, Homepage: www.foolab.org -- Don't send me any attachment in Micro$oft (.DOC, .PPT) format please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html Preferable attachments: .PDF, .HTML, .TXT Thanx for adding this text to Your signature
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature