Re: Arabeyes Translation Teams.

["Afief Halumi" <afief dot h at gmail dot com>]

I completly agree, i signed up to this mailing list hoping to translate stuff, which in my book means i get a string, and write it's meaning in arabic.
what i faced instead was quite an amount of manuals, i am required to open a CVS account, and this is only the zeroth step, i didn't go on because the first step would probably inherit a lot of it's precedor's complexity.
I did a good deal of translation on Launchpad, but the fact that i don't know if i am doing effective work, or just adding to an old translation which you guys here have already fixed made me stop doing so, i returned here quite determined to do translation and got dishearted again.

Why doesn't Arabeyes implement an interface like Launchpad for translation? it would enable even hobby translators to contribute and in the end the bad translations can be easily filtered out(chosing the best translation from a list is easier than making up a new one)

Regards
Afief Halumi

On 8/2/06, Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj <aalarfaj at gmail dot com> wrote:

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,


_______________________________________________
Doc mailing list
Doc at arabeyes dot org
http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/doc