Announcing the Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project

[Stas Sușcov]

În data de Jo, 18-03-2010 la 09:11 -0500, Matthew Nuzum a scris:
> It's nice to meet you Aron. I've been to your site many times and
> wondered how you did that.
> 
> This project that Chris is leading will allow people who prefer
> Chinese but come to the English website learn that there are resources
> in their language. So they may see a text message like this at the top
> of the page: 中国资源 That text will link to a page on the wiki in
> Chinese that says "hey, we have a website, forums and mailing list in
> your language, here they are!"
> 
> (that's from google translate, hopefully the point is clear)
> 
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 11:44 PM, Aron Xu <happyaron.xu at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>         Hi,
>         We've already had a running localized website:
>         http://www.ubuntu.org.cn , it seems to be based on python and
>         can sync
>         the content from the main site. Hope this information can
>         help, the
>         site maintainer is oneleaf at gmail.com.

Ubuntu Romania uses drupal (ubuntu.ro), and achieved the same level of
localisation/alikeness, but let us focus on real stuff and stop loco
websites showcase.

Regarding client side `HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE`:
try this in your browser:
---
javascript:alert(navigator.language);
---
worked for chromium and ff.

So I believe we can use both yql method and this one to get maximum
precise results.

Having static pages (which is also the best for performance from what I
read), we can use kinda templates instead of real pages and populate
them by loading a json file according to the locale we received from
`navigator.language`. (Idea stolen from facebook technologies)

Pros:
* no dynamic languages/databases -> no server load
* json data can be manipulated  by anybody and archived into a bzr repo
* freedom of templating

Cons:
* all is client side, so it depends much on target browser
* requires a lot of compatibility QA

Any thoughts are welcomed.

-- 
()  Campania Panglicii în ASCII
/\  http://stas.nerd.ro/ascii/