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[d7n] News about the Decathlon IV
From: Samuel Murray (Groenkloof) <samuel@tr...> - 2008-08-31 12:44
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NEWS ABOUT THE DECATHLON IV This is the 4th general newsletter of the Decathlon project. Please share this e-mail with people who may be interested in our project. Invite your friends to join this low-volume announcement mailing list about the Decathlon project. And encourage anyone to help translate software into their language. In this letter, we look at the following topics: * See a second source language (new feature in Pootle) * Major languages, please help to translate! * The top translating teams in the past 3 months * Project of the month: OpenProj (project management) * Other current projects: - WordPress (a blogging system) - VLC (a multimedia player) - SpeedCrunch (a scientific calculator) * Overview over all our projects * Tools for our translators SEE A SECOND SOURCE LANGUAGE There is an exciting new feature in Pootle that will help translators whose English skills are not very good. On the Pootle server at pootle.locamotion.org, translators can now translate from two source languages at the same time. This is great news for translators who speak French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic etc, but whose English skills are not very good. Please take a look at this new feature. Simply log into your account at pootle.locamotion.org, and select a second source language in your account settings. http://pootle.locamotion.org/home/options.html When you translate, the second source language is displayed underneath the English text. MAJOR LANGUAGES, PLEASE HELP TRANSLATE! I'm sure you all agree that the second source language feature can be very useful for translators who do not speak good English. However, any segment is only displayed in the second language if that string is already translated into the second language. For this reason, I would like to call all translators from major languages to help finish the translations into their languages, so that translators in minority languages can benefit from it. In the coming week, we will activate the French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Japanese languages for all existing projects hosted on Decathlon. If you can think of other major languages that may help translators, let us know! Please note that some of these projects already have official translators in those languages, and it is possible that they may not wish other volunteers to help them. We encourage you to contact the individual projects and to try to contact the exiting translators in those projects to get their cooperation. Do not hesitate to contact me if you need assistance. However, you're welcome to help finish the translations on our Pootle server regardless of whether you get cooperation from the existing translators, but then the risk is there that they may not accept your efforts when we send the completed translations to them. Still, it would help other translators from minority languages if the translations into major languages are complete on our Pootle server. TOP TRANSLATING TEAMS IN THE PAST 3 MONTHS This month I'd like to give you an idea of the number of translations done over the past three months. The following list of language teams have translated 50 lines or more (line counts are somewhat approximate): June: Sundanese (866 lines), Finnish (835 lines), Urdu (454 lines) , Vietnamese (402 lines) , Papiamento (307 lines), Telugu (269 lines), Korean (218 lines), Venda (175 lines) and Chinese Simplified (60 lines). July: Chinese Simplified (1071 lines), Sundanese (771 lines), Korean (608 lines), Latvian (572 lines), German (515 lines), Vietnamese (484 lines), Finnish (216 lines), Russian (156 lines), Romanian (112 lines) and Welsh (55 lines). Aug: Hindi (1010 lines), Tagalog (938 lines), Czech (649 lines), Turkish (619 lines), Latvian (600 lines), Polish (598 lines), German (438 lines), Ukrainian (368 lines), Portuguese (continental and Brazilian) (354 lines), Spanish (325 lines), Malay (289 lines), Chinese Simplified (282 lines), Albanian (209 lines), Mongolian (201 lines), Basque (171 lines), Thai (91 lines) and Catalan (85 lines). In the month of September I'll put in some extra efforts to try to get some professional translators involved who speak the above languages. HELP TRANSLATE OPENPROJ (PROJECT MANAGEMENT) For the month of September we would like our translators to focus on translating a project management tool names OpenProj. The program is written in Java, which means that it will run on Linux, Windows and Macintosh computers. There is also an online version which is currently run on subscription basis by the creators of the offline tool. This is an opportunity for translators from both major and minority languages to translate a useful tool that will help businesses and other organisations to do project planning. OpenProj hasn't been translated into many languages yet. The entire project is 4322 words long. To translate OpenProj, first visit the project's page on our wiki: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/openproj ...and if you're interested, follow the instructions under the heading "Procedure for translating OpenProj", and let me know. As always, start by translating the pootle-terminology.po file. There are a number of opensource and free project management tools available. If you're new to modern project management and you'd like to see how a variety of these tools work, you can install several of them to try them out. With a little gymnastics it is possible to test your own translations -- but if you struggle, you're welcome to ask me to generate the latest .properties files for you for your language, if you want to test your translation. If you've forgotten your Pootle username or if you struggle to register or activate your account, please do not hesitate to contact me at samuel@tr.... OVERVIEW OVER ALL OUR PROJECTS Perhaps I should also remind you of all the project we're translating at the moment: * Freemind (a mind mapper) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/freemind * Art of Illusion (a graphics and animation editor) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/aoi * WordPress (a blogger) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/wordpress * FileZilla (an FTP program) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/filezilla * VLC (a media player) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/vlc * Tux Paint (a children's drawing tool) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/tuxpaint * TuxGuitar (a sheet music editor) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/tuxguitar * SpeedCrunch (a scientific calculator) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/speedcrunch * OpenProj (a project management tool) http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/openproj REMINDER ABOUT OUR OTHER PROJECTS: Allow me to repeat some stuff that I had also written in the previous newsletter, in case you wish to share the Decathlon newsletter with people who haven't joined yet. * Wordpress Let's translate WordPress! It is a very popular blogging system and it is already available in many languages. If you want to help translate WordPress into your language, read the information about it on our wiki, and follow the procedures to let the WordPress community know that you're there. If there is already a WordPress translation in your language, see how you can get involved with the current translators, and if you wish to use Pootle for your translations, why not try to convince the other translators in your language to do the same? http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/wordpress The language file for WordPress is rather large, so what we've done on the Pootle server is to split it up into smaller files. This way, you Can decide which section you want to finish first. If the WordPress localisation community sees that you're serious about translating WordPress, they'll create a blog page dedicated to your language. * VLC VLC is a video and sound player. It plays several types of files without the need for additional installations. In some cases it can play commercial DVDs, even. A new version of VLC is currently being developed, and the language file for that version is already available. VLC has been translated into several languages, but many of them has not been updated for a long time. Here's an opportunity to get an existing translation process back on track! http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/vlc Don't get a fright when you look at VLC's word count. The language file is 30 000 words long, but if you translate a specific 5000 of them, the program itself will look almost entirely translated. We've split the one big VLC file into many smaller files, including one called "GUI". The files on our Pootle server have also been split by topic, so if you're more interested in one aspect of media players, you can focus on that file alone. * SpeedCrunch At present, the SpeedCrunch web site can be translated via Pootle. However, I would like to encourage you to get involved in translating the user interface as well, even though this can't be done in Pootle yet. I recently created MS Word and OpenOffice.org files with the SpeedCrunch, along with definitions and explanations that translators might find useful. These files can be downloaded from the Decathlon wiki: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/speedcrunch Included in the files are alternative names for some of the scientific procedures, images of the menu in SpeedCrunch, and a list of common abbreviations for the mathematical items. The text itself is small -- only about 350 words What makes SpeedCrunch interesting from a translation point of view, is that translating it would entail contacting the local maths professor and consulting mathematics materials (eg dictionaries) in your own language. Sounds like a challenge! TOOLS FOR OUR TRANSLATORS It may be useful to remind you of some of the things available that might help with your translation efforts. * po-terminology.po Every project in Pootle has a file called "po-terminology.po". This is a glossary file. If you translate it first, Pootle will use it to offer suggested translations while you translate the other files. If you don't want to use Pootle but you think you might find the glossary useful, you can download it from our wiki pages -- it is generally the 4th link from the top of each software project's page. * Custom Google search We created mini search engines to search only very specific files that may be related to the program you're translating. These search engines are powered by Google. One of the first four links on each project's page in our wiki will take you to the search engine. It is very useful for research into difficult terms to translate. * The Pootle users mailing list There are several Pootle servers in the world, and many of their users are on the Pootle users mailing list. It is okay for new users to post questions there. If you struggle with any aspect of Pootle, simply send a message to the Pootle users mailing list. Join here: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle * The Pootle IRC channel If you know how to use IRC, you can ask Pootle related questions on the Pootle IRC channel. The server is irc.freenode.net, and the channel is #pootle. Interestingly, many of the programs we translate also have channels for their users on that server, so it can be useful if you want to ask a quick question from people that use the program regularly. * Quick start guide for translators If you're a translator on our Pootle server, don't forget to indicate your project and your language in your user profile. This makes it easier for us to assign rights to you. The procedure is also explained in our Quick Start guide, that we recommend everyone to read. http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/quickstart * Localisation guide Finally, it is worth taking a look at the Localisation Guide that is being written by Translate.org.za and other people. It is full of useful information for localisation translators and project managers. Go check it out, and add to it! http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/guide/start I look forward to seeing some activity this month on OpenProj, VLC and WordPress. Sincerely Samuel Murray -- Samuel Murray samuel@tr... Decathlon, for volunteer opensource translations http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/ |
| Thread | Author | Date |
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| [d7n] News about the Decathlon IV | Samuel Murray (Groenkloof) <samuel@tr...> |
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