Re: Arabeyes -- a critique

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org>]

On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 09:31 +0100, Arafat Medini wrote:
>
> [..]
>
> What do the questions have to do with the answers you gave I don't see
> a relation btw doing translation for 20 years and Arabeyes being
> degraded to "its initial state...".
> 

ie. we are not growing but shrinking.

> Hmm, sure we are no experts but from my experience for eg. I started
> and barely could write an arabic word with my PC today I know enough
> to claim that I am doing concise and precise translations. What I want
> to say is that you are not born as an expert you become one whether by
> self-lerning or by learning from others.

Absolutely -- I am not debating that, that's not the point.

> Sure a mentor program is good still do you want to make every newcomer
> go through a mentor program? Ok loose every newcomer then by now?
> Better have a bad translation then no translation, and this brings me
> to the first point, AS you are speaking about translation efforts
> where is the new horizon you wanted to show us by questioning the fact
> that we are only translating software...
> 

We should be thinking of creating new things -- that's all I'm saying.

> We still have problems ordering our internals, I think that's why
> people can't really focus over the big picture. On the other hand
> efforts like standardization and making Arabeyes a legal entity are
> right steps in that direction. And also, what do you want Arabeys to

Yes, it is a necessary step.

> be ? Arabeyes is a project which incorporates nearly everything from
> fonts to software regarding Arabic and FOSS. I personally always
> thought we are even doing too much! Still we don't have enough money
> nor people to even make basic things as translate KDE for eg.
> I want to say, yeah let us even redefine Arabeyes to a food maker but
> how? If you don't have enough resources.
> 

You are hitting the main point. We don't have a long-term plan.

> Well I don't care much about fame or prizes, at the end what really
> matters (in the deb case) is that you have an Arabic installation
> procedure, if we can participate in any form why not? What the other
> ppl think of us good or bad does not interest me to be honest. If the
> product works with 10% or 90% help from us then great Arabic works
> under FOSS, goal reached, let's move to the next.
> 

That's not the point. Sure, we want to have full Arabic support --
whether it comes from Arabeyes or someone else. However, the real
question is, then what? 

Regards,
Mohammed Elzubeir