[Audacity-translation] Petition regarding Audacity's translation to Basque

[Osoitz E <oe...@gm...>]

Hello,

My name is Osoitz, and I beg you to take the following petition into
consideration:

---


We write you on behalf of a community of Free Software localizers who are
concerned about the language being used in the current translation of
Audacity into Basque (eu).

Librezale.eus is an open community of volunteer Free Software translators
which over a period of nearly 15 years has become a de-facto centerpiece
for people to get support and collaborate in the area of Basque
translations.

Through our common communication channels, frequent complaints arise about
the quality of Audacity’s translation.

Any requests from volunteers to participate in the Audacity translation
project are rejected without further explanations and, as you might notice,
Xabier Aramendi is the only member of the Basque team in Transifex.

Unfortunately, the fact of him being notably hermetic is no news to us, and
any past attempts to communicate or collaborate with him have been in vain
— if not receiving confrontational messages.

The language being used in the current translation uses made-up words,
consistently ignoring dictionaries and linguists, let alone translation
conventions or expectations of fellow translators and users. This means the
UI becomes unusable even to native speakers.

Should it be required, we are happy to provide very specific linguistic
evidence of the incorrect language and terminology being used.
Nevertheless, we’d like to point you to a past experience where we had to
fight the same issue in the context of the VLC media player project.

   -

   Initial communication of the problem to VLC developers:

   https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2012-February/085884.html
   -

   Lack of willingness to collaborate:
   https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/translators/2012-June/001075.html
   https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/translators/2012-June/001070.html


   -

   Resolution:
   https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2013-February/092051.html

Note how VLC developers ended up contacting the official institute of the
Basque language (Euskaltzaindia) in order to make an informed decision on
the matter.

Having said all of that, we would like to kindly ask you to revoke Xabier
Aramendi's role as a coordinator of the Audacity translation project into
Basque, or at least have the translation project currently owned by him
moved to a different locale code, considering that the current work doesn’t
belong to Basque (eu).

Likewise, we would like to suggest Osoitz Elkorobarrutia (with username
'Osoitz' in Transifex) as the new project coordinator for the ‘eu’ locale,
and we can vouch for his dedicated effort which will ensure Audacity’s
health in the near and long-term future.

We believe this would help unblock the situation where individuals and
collectives are deprived of using Audacity in a UI language they could
understand.

Signers of the petition

   -

   Alexander Gabilondo - Translator of Roundcube, Curlew, BackinTime,
   OBS-Studio, Viking, Zim, Epoptes and others.
   -

   Ander Elortondo - Translator of Super Tux Kart, Tux paint and others.
   -

   Asier Sarasua - Translator of LibreOffice, FreeCAD, QGIS, Scribus and
   others, Basque Wikimedians User group.
   -

   Asier Iturralde - Translator of Mint, F-droid, LXDE, Mate, and others
   -

   Gorka Azkarate - Translator of Wikia, Calibre, Klavaro and more, Basque
   Teacher, Basque Wikimedians User Group .
   - Ibon Idoiaga Basaras - Translator of phpBB, FBReader, Calibre, Piwigo.
   -

   Iñaki Larrañaga Murgoitio - Translator for GNOME, LyX. And Legacy
   Translator of OpenOffice.org, VLC, Cinelerra, Inkscape and more.
   - Joseba Makazaga -  Head of the Department of Computer Science and
   Artificial Intelligence, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). User
   of Audacity.Joseba Makazaga -  Head of the Department of Computer
   Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of the Basque Country
   (UPV/EHU). User of Audacity.
   -

   Julen Ruiz Aizpuru - Translator of Firefox and others.
   -

   Marko Txopitea - Translator of WordPress and others.
   -

   Mikel Iturbe - Translator of ScummVM, Cryptocat, Freemind and others.
   Basque Wikimedians User Group
   -

   Mikel Larreategi - Translator of Plone, former translator of WordPress
   -

   Mikel Olasagasti - Member of GNU Translation Project.
   - Urtzi Odriozola Lizaso - Translator of Popcorn Time, Super Tux Kart
   and games like StepMania 5, Super Tux, 0AD and others
   -

   Osoitz Elkorobarrutia - Translator of LibreOffice, LineageOS, F-droid,
   and others.