Jono: Localization of Wiki Entries Discussion

Mon Feb 26 15:05:10 GMT 2007

I tend to agree with Melissa,

Being form a Spanish-speaking LoCo (Venezuela Team, ubuntu-ve), I can  truly
say that having information  in my language would help widespread the
community feeling that most of us have come to appreciate so much. Ubuntu is
getting big where I am, and more people are joining the boat fast.

Spanish documentation for technical stuff regarding ubuntu just Rocks... it
is everywhere. that is one of the things that drives many people to ubuntu
in my country and this is something that everyone acknowledges. (kudos to
all of the people creating such great documentation). Now Imagine what LoCo
docs in Spanish would do for those people. more community awareness.

I would consider some entries in the wiki very essential stuff that should
be available in many languages. that way people can have an idea of what the
loCo project is trying to do. English is the lingua franca. but reaching out
to those can't speak English is a great sign of cooperation and integration
(no team left behind regardless of language???).

having this docs in each team's wikis is redundancy. think of when updates
come along. it is easier to update something that is in the ubuntu wiki just
once ... than updating it 20 times in different sites. and that adds up to
the fact that if all loCo's help translating the docs it integrates us all
into one common task. that can't be bad

those are my 100 Bolivars (my ten cents)

Efrain Valles
effie_jayx
ubuntu-ve team member

On 2/26/07, Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com> wrote:
>
> Matthew East wrote:
> > On Sun, 2007-02-25 at 11:55 -0700, Joey Stanford wrote:
> >
> >> Jono (et al),
> >>
> >> At today's LoCo team meeting the subject of localization of our
> official
> >> LoCo wiki arose.  I agreed to capture the comments and post them here
> on
> >> the list for discussion.
> >>
> >> There is a recommendation that we should localize some of the more
> >> static pages (e.g. our knowledge base and how-tos) for the benefit of
> >> non-English speaking team as well as for consistency in other
> >> languages.  We know other teams have translated some of our material
> >> already.
> >>
> >> The proposal that came up on the meeting today focused on moving our
> >> content into a bzr branch, translating it via rosetta, and then
> >> publishing the various versions on to the wiki.
> >>
> >
> > I'd quite like to comment on this too, if I may. I think there are two
> > issues here.
> >
> > First of all, in order to interact with the international community, a
> > knowledge of English, which is the working language, is necessary. That
> > means that one of the essential requirements for a loco-contact is to
> > speak English so that it's possible to communicate with other teams and
> > the international community in general.
> >
> > This requirement arises out of necessity, but it's also helpful -
> > failing to maintain it will create the possibility that teams will start
> > which are out of touch with the community in all sorts of different
> > ways.
> >
> > So for that reason alone I'd tend to think that translating those web
> > pages isn't a good idea. I'd definitely like to hear why people think
> > it's necessary.
> >
>
> There's lots of information within the LoCo pages that are not
> exclusively for LoCo Contacts. For instance joining a LoCo and the
> Knowledge Base (much of which is about LoCo activities that *anyone* in
> the LoCo can partake in or organise). Excluding (by omission) the
> members of a LoCo from information on how the LoCo thing is done, is
> never going to be productive.
>
> > Having said that, obviously people (particularly contacts) should be
> > encouraged to take the information on the pages to their teams, and that
> > will involve translation of the material. This should be done (in my
> > opinion) in the same way as translating other relevant material - it can
> > be put on loco teams' websites.
> >
>
> This is precisely what we are trying to decide.
>
> However one must realise that for ease of finding information about a
> LoCo is only as good as the visibility of the information. The main wiki
> ranks in Google and other search engines much higher than LoCo wikis and
> hence is easier to find. Making the information accessible with the
> *least* amount of clicking is a good way to avoid confusing the user
> (who is already confused enough linguistically) and henceforth giving up.
>
>
> --
> Sincerely
> Melissa Draper
>
> http://www.meldraweb.com
>
> Phone: 0404 595 395
> (intl): +61 404 595 395
>
> P.O Box 1412
> Lavington, NSW 2641
>
> --
> loco-contacts mailing list
> loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
>
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