[Sugar-devel] Translations
James Cameron
quozl at laptop.org
Tue Feb 23 20:29:10 EST 2016
Google Translate does not work very well for such short strings; the
translation is very low quality, and it does not know the context of
Sugar.
It would be better for a person fluent in those languages and Sugar to
provide translations.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 06:45:58AM +0530, Utkarsh Tiwari wrote:
> Hello,
> I had volunteered to help Sugarlabs with some translations but the
> thing is that my first language is Hindi and I am fluent in English. Would
> there be any issues if I use Google translator to translate any project to some
> other language (except Hindi and English) ? Is it allowed?
>
> regards,
> Utkarsh Tiwari
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:35 AM, Nick Doiron <[1]ndoiron at mapmeld.com> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone... I'm in the Unicode Consortium so I'm happy to help work out
> i18n tech issues in our Sugary ecosystem.
>
> On the original point, I agree with Tony that it would be valuable to hire
> an i18n/l10n point person. This funding has been around for a while without
> any one person responsible for shipping it. You might want additional
> support or conversation, from Open Technology Fund, Localization Lab, or
> Adobe, for the position and workshops.
> I'd like to see some people narrowing down where they know we need a
> translation. If you can say I know a teacher who wants this or we use this
> activity in Language A and want it in Language B, we should be able to
> deliver that. There are interesting politics and discussions here, but the
> funding is for translating and not for not-translating.
>
> Technology side: it matters if you're translating Sugar, core Sugar
> activities, additional activities, or Sugarizer. This is essential because
> they're different programs at different levels of completeness, in use by
> different people.
> - Sugar and core activities have been ready from the beginning using
> gettext and accepting translations on Pootle. I don't see that changing,
> unless we want to use GitHub to reach younger developers.
> - Additional activities: you would need to look on a case-by-case basis, to
> see if text was hardcoded. Also you need special attention if language is
> part of the activity, as in typing tutors, flipbooks, or crossword puzzles.
> Tangential blog post: [2]https://medium.com/@mapmeld/
> crosswords-in-burmese-f672ae583649
> - I did some research, and Sugarizer has three translation files, including
> this master file: [3]https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/blob/master/
> locale.ini Other web-based activities should use Polyglot.js from Airbnb;
> it's cool.
>
> Nick
>
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Caryl Bigenho <[4]caryl at laptop.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Folks
>
> Here are some thoughts on Internationalization and Localization...
>
> 1) The most important consideration is what the local people really
> want… not what we think they want or think they should want. Maybe they
> are happy with English. On the other hand, maybe they would prefer
> their own local language (or dialect). Don't assume anything. Don't ask
> just one person. Ask enough people to get a genuine consensus.
>
> 2) Using students to provide localization is an excellent educational
> activity. However, it needs to be overseen by an "expert" (maybe their
> teacher) to insure it is both accurate and appropriate before
> submission to Pootle.
>
> 3) The Spanish of Mexico is slightly different from the Spanish of Peru
> and/or the Spanish of Argentina (etc., etc,, etc). Using students for
> localization could be helpful here and, I'm sure for other languages.
>
> 4) Again, for Spanish… why not look to our largest Sugar deployment,
> Uruguay, for enlisting students to help? One of the SLOBs (José Miguel
> García) is Uruguayan as is super-star teacher Rosamel Ramirez.
>
> 5) Applying to GSOC for help in any aspect with this work seems like a
> "no brainer" but the deadline for applications for 2016 was yesterday!
> Emoji
>
> Caryl
> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
> Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 14:44:28 -0500
> Subject: Re: Translations
> From: [5]sora at unleashkids.org
> To: [6]holt at laptop.org
> CC: [7]tony_anderson at usa.net; [8]tim at timmoody.com; [9]
> ndoiron at mapmeld.com; [10]caryl at laptop.org; [11]sverma at sfsu.edu; [12]
> sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org; [13]localization at lists.laptop.org;
> [14]walter at sugarlabs.org; [15]slobs at lists.sugarlabs.org
>
> The success of the first translation will depend on how established /
> knowledgeable the local community is. Reviewing the first round of
> Haitian Creole translations, which I think were done by volunteers, you
> notice some obvious problems, like inconsistent terms. I've personally
> seen students and teachers become confused by these issues when using
> the computer. They keep using it anyway, but it definitely affects the
> user experience. Now, hopefully the attitude of "this is the wrong way
> to say it" will inspire the next round of volunteers to do a better
> translation - but that's a big assumption to make.
>
> I think it's important to remember that in many of these places,
> language ideology is something communities are working through. All the
> research supports literacy / learning in the mother-tongue language,
> but in many places the languages kids speak at home are seen as
> inferior to the ones they learn in school - not just because the one
> they learn in school is more widely-spoken, but because of myths that
> the language spoken at home is not "advanced" enough to study something
> like science / math / tech.
>
> So, basically, if the first translation is not adequate, there may not
> be a second translation. People may decide "This language is not
> adequate for using the computer" instead "Our translation is not
> adequate; let's make it better."'
>
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 7:51 AM, Adam Holt <[16]holt at laptop.org> wrote:
>
> Excellent food for thought Tony!
>
> +Sora, Tim, Nick, Caryl to see if they have ideas/suggestions
> below?
>
> On Feb 20, 2016 3:35 AM, "Tony Anderson" <[17]tony_anderson at usa.net
> > wrote:
>
> As I understand the issue: SugarLabs has some funds available
> to support translation of Sugar. At the SLOBs meeting, it was
> proposed that
> SugarLabs recruit a 'translation manager', a possibly paid
> position. One question is the job description for this role.
>
> I would like to review the translation process:
>
> Translation has two separate parts: internationalization(I18n)
> and localization (L10n).
>
> The Sugar-Devel team is responsible for I18n (preparing the
> framework to support localization) and the community is
> responsible for L10n - providing translations (by default, from
> English) to other languages.
>
> The immediate focus is on using Pootle as the I18n framework
> with translators providing the localization.
>
> Let's divide the languages into three groups:
>
> - English (the base language)
>
> - Mediums of instruction (languages used at deployments as
> a common language where more than one language is spoken)
>
> - Local language (languages used by students at home)
>
> When a new Sugar release is made, the Pootle English master
> files should be a part of the release. Sugar development should
> ensure that Pootle files are available for all software in the
> release.
>
> Sugar may want to provide localization for one or more mediums
> of instruction (e.g. Spanish, French, Arabic). Since this would
> imply that
> files for these localizations are available at release,
> SugarLabs should decide which, if any, of these languages are
> to be supported.
>
> Deployments (or deployment sponsors) may need localization of
> Sugar for specific local languages (e.g. Kinyarwanda, Haitian
> Creole,
> Sotho, Xhosa). I believe these localizations are most likely to
> come from Sugar/XO deployments where the language is used. Some
> would
> seem to be a given - Cambodian.
>
> However, strange things happen. For example, Rwanda is one of
> the largest and most active deployments. However, there is no
> Kinyarwanda localization. The reason is probably that in Rwanda
> the OLPC laptops are part of a path to English. They are
> introduced at the fourth grade, the first year when the
> required medium of instruction is English. While Kinyarwanda is
> a subject in grades 4-6, the priority is using the XOs to
> facilitate learning in English, Mathematics, and Science.
>
> I believe that the Pootle files are distributed and installed
> with the released image. This should mean that XO users who
> know English and the native language could provide the
> localization. Once it is complete, the files can be installed
> on the XOs at the deployment and the localization would be
> available at the deployment. Ideally, localization would be
> done by the students as a learning activity. For example, in
> Rwanda, localization to Kinyarwanda would help students a lot
> in learning English. Sameer Verma has provided an excellent
> tutorial on how to do localization which could be included in
> the Sugar image.
>
> So, the translation manager would be responsible to identify
> deployments which use specific local languages and work with
> them to organize 'L10n' days for new releases. The translation
> manager should then interface with Pootle to submit the
> localization files for review and acceptance by Pootle.
>
> Sugar development could review Sugar (Python) activities to see
> if they support Pootle and attempt, eg. through GSOC, to get
> activities upgraded to implement Pootle and to include a base
> set of English Pootle files.
>
> Perhaps OLPC France could be tasked to provide French
> localization as part of the release process. For Spanish,
> perhaps Sebastian Silva (Peru) or Plan Ceibal could accept
> responsibility for Spanish.
>
> Meanwhile, being on the other side of the world, I have not
> made progress on getting a committee to help put their two
> cents in on this. Clearly, this scenario must be reviewed for
> Floss Manuals, Sugarizer, and other SugarLabs products which
> don't fit in this one. Also, how to provide localization of
> IIAB-2 content is, at least, a formidable question.
>
> Tony
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> [18]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> [19]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
> References:
>
> [1] mailto:ndoiron at mapmeld.com
> [2] https://medium.com/@mapmeld/crosswords-in-burmese-f672ae583649
> [3] https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/blob/master/locale.ini
> [4] mailto:caryl at laptop.org
> [5] mailto:sora at unleashkids.org
> [6] mailto:holt at laptop.org
> [7] mailto:tony_anderson at usa.net
> [8] mailto:tim at timmoody.com
> [9] mailto:ndoiron at mapmeld.com
> [10] mailto:caryl at laptop.org
> [11] mailto:sverma at sfsu.edu
> [12] mailto:sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> [13] mailto:localization at lists.laptop.org
> [14] mailto:walter at sugarlabs.org
> [15] mailto:slobs at lists.sugarlabs.org
> [16] mailto:holt at laptop.org
> [17] mailto:tony_anderson at usa.net
> [18] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> [19] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
--
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/
More information about the Sugar-devel
mailing list