Ubuntu 11.04 Translations Plans

Mon Oct 4 18:06:41 UTC 2010

Hi all,

Some days ago I was asking you for feedback on the translations roadmap
for the 11.04 cycle [1], and at this point I must send you a big thanks:
you've all provided great ideas and comments, which I'll try to address
by responding to them directly in this thread.

I'm working on the plan right now, and on the next few days I'll be
drafting the blueprints for what will become the sessions at UDS were
we'll discuss the roadmap's objectives.

We will obviously won't be able to work on every one of the ideas you've
provided, so I'll be picking up the ones I believe to be most important
for the translations community. If I did not pick up one of your
suggestions, don't be discouraged: if you want to, feel free to still
lead the effort of implementing it. Even if it's not on the roadmap,
I'll help you in what I can.

Let's start by Milo's ideas: 

El dv 17 de 09 de 2010 a les 12:06 +0200, en/na Milo Casagrande va
escriure:
> Hi David,
> 
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 19:17, David Planella <david.planella at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > In the Community team at Canonical we are now starting to lay out the
> > plans for the 11.04 roadmap for translations.
> >
> > For this, we really value your input and would very much like to take
> > your ideas and feedback into account.
> >
> > One of the key areas I'd like to work on in this cycle, for instance, is
> > outreach: we want to bang the drum and get people excited and involved
> > in translations.
> >
> > What are your thoughts and ideas? What do you think we should focus on?
> 
> Maybe, as a short-term goal, I was thinking about reaching out
> translator teams, and ask them if they have story to share about how,
> a translated version of Ubuntu, has helped people/companies/schools in
> a particular way, something that a non-translated version couldn't
> have achieved, and share their story on the Fridge, pointing out how
> important is the translators work.

I really like this idea, I think it would be good to start a coordinated
effort to publish stories for each translation team. I'm planning to
have a UDS session on this.

>  We should probably try to have more
> translators on the hall-of-fame,

We haven't updated the Hall Of Fame for a while, so the status of the
HoF is right now on hold, unless someone finds the time to step up and
help maintaining it. That's the reason why we haven't been adding any
rockstar contributors (be it in translation or in any area).

>  and start publishing more translators
> interview.
> 

We should be publishing the interviews monthly, but there seems to have
been some delay in the last one. It's been hectic lately with the
preparation of several OpenWeek, AppDeveloperWeek and such events, but
I'll try to see if we can unblock it and start publishing the next batch
of interviews.

> What follows is probably a very very long term thing, maybe not
> implementable too... but anyway.
> 
> I would really like to see a community-driven web portal where
> translator groups (but not only them) can get together, a sort-of
> Language Portal like Microsoft has, but better and open-source:
> http://www.microsoft.com/Language/en-US/Default.aspx
> 
> Maybe somebody will turn up their nose because it's Microsoft, but I
> think that portal is very well done, and a precious resource for
> translators. I've been using that portal for a while to look into how
> certain words are translated into my language from a very big software
> company like Microsoft. I've done this also to try to keep some kind
> of cross-operating-system coherence when translating technical terms
> (so maybe users will not feel lost).
> 
> Think about this portal as a glossary on steroids, but not only a mere
> glossary portal: a new professional look for Ubuntu and FLOSS
> translators, and the work they do.
> 
> A "forum" where translators can share opinions, and talk about their
> language, where developers can get information on how to i18n-ize
> their application, what are the tools the FLOSS world has for i18n;
> and where developers can find very good and motivated translators to
> help their apps reach the most number of people.
> 
> What do you think?
> 

That's something I've been thinking for a while. I too had seen the
Microsoft languages portal a while ago (it looked a bit different than
now, there were also case stories and such), so I'm glad someone else
brings up the subject as well.

Despite all attempts to structure the contents on the Translations
namespace and to simplify the main page so that people can easily find
the info they need (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/), the wiki has
grown too big for being able to store all the content related to
translations and present it to new users in a way that is both easy to
use and attractive.

I've been discussing this with Jono, and also looking at the awesome
work my team mate Ahmed has been doing on a Cloud Portal, and I think it
is the time for a Translations Portal.

The idea of the portal is to have a site on
http://translations.ubuntu.com that can serve to aggregate and showcase
the current content related to Ubuntu Translations with the main
purposes of:

      * Inspiring and getting new contributors excited about
        translations
      * Be used as a spring board for anyone to easily get started to
        translating Ubuntu  

That is something which I would also like to focus on this cycle, and I
would encourage anyone to give a hand to make the Ubuntu translations
experience even more awesome.

I find the suggestion of hosting a glossary and a discussion forum good
ideas, but that is something that will require some development or
infrastructure work. For the first phase, I'd like to focus on building
a functional portal and aggregating some basic information: # News and
announcements, Articles on translations, Translations quick start guide,
Links to reference documentation on the wiki, Microblogging,
Presentation video, Videos on how to get started with translations, etc.

I'll also be adding a UDS session for that.

What do you think?

Regards,
David.

[1]
https://davidplanella.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/ubuntu-11-04-translations-plans/

-- 
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
www.ubuntu.com / www.davidplanella.wordpress.com
www.identi.ca/dplanella / www.twitter.com/dplanella
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