Djihed Afifi wrote: > Salam > > The more I look into the men count that we have for translation, the > more I realise we are in a sore need for more translators. For > example, for gnome 2.16, which is expected to be completed somewhere > at the start of September, I'm seeing only three dedicated > translators, the maintainer who is too stretched out and still doing a > heck of a job (thank you Youssef), Raffah and myself. Let me put it > simply to you: Arabic Gnome 2.16 won't ship with only us, I've thought > about this realistically for a long time. Translation projects are > slipping from under our attention quickly. Thankfully, we just barely > have enough time to do something about it. > > 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. > > This is also necessary to *contain* all Arabic translation efforts. > Instead of being selective by raising the bar high for entrants, > Arabeyes should embrace every possible translator. I wonder why we > complain about not too many active members when we're being elitist. > Again, the goal is not to form a group of elitists, let's drop the > arrogance attitude a bit towards new comers, and move the Arabic > translation train into its rails again. We're the only serious Arabic > translators in the scene, it's a great *responsibility*, even > religiously, if religion holds any place in you. > > Please understand that 99.99% of Arabic computer users out there are > not as tech savvy as you are (actually, that's the reason only you > survived the obstacles..), the language(English) and the terminology > (IT) form a learning curve that is simply too steep for them. > > 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 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. > > Please understand that this is not a rant, I'll put my hand first on > the table to get this moving. We need to *work*, to get things > *working* and to show that we actually *mean business*. > > 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. > > Please voice your opinion even if you'll only write a couple of words. I agree with all what you said especially that I faced the hassle myself. I can't remember how much I bothered Youssef Chahibi but I know I did. Basically IMHO, I think we need to update our documentation, at least the ones related to translation and CVS (include more gui stuff and screenshots), update or better have a bilingual website for AE.org. This will help a lot in the process of recruiting resources and indeed the translations as a consequence. Djihed, thanks for bringing this up > > Djihed > > [1]read the flipping manual > _______________________________________________ > Doc mailing list > Doc at arabeyes dot org > http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/doc > >
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