Re: i18n - Revisited

[Fernando Botelho <Fernando.Botelho@F123.org>]

Thanks Jean-Christophe, this is very helpful.

"If that's a question related to my answer, I have no idea :) I know 
about the French group that handles GNU programs, but I don't know if 
such groups exist in other languages."

Ok. it sounds like it is all fairly ad hoc, if that is the right 
expression. If anyone wants to do this, they have to figure out their 
own infrastructure and process.

"I participated to a discussion here about that a few years ago and the 
answer I got was "people who use emacs know English (or should) so there 
is no need for l10n in the UI"..."

Sad. There is maybe a billion persons around the world that deserve and 
could access the productivity of Emacs and lack the language skill to 
work in English.

I recognize the attitude and short-sightedness, I was just not expecting 
to find it here.

Could this be just fear of the technical complexity of messing with that 
side of the code? Probably a combination of bug-avoidance and a sincere 
feeling that this would be a waste of time.

"As far as I can tell, this is *not* happening. You should focus on 
translating documentation first, the Elisp reference, the Emacs manual, 
etc. Use po4a to get PO files from the texi sources and then use the 
process you prefer to translate that. I personally have created a 
collaborative translation project for the elisp reference, using OmegaT 
as the client. It is not progressing super fast because I'm the only one 
working on it."

I will look into this. Thank you, it is much better than starting from 
scratch.

"The problem with "non technical" translators is that then need to be 
minimally technical to at least understand emacs. I really don't suggest 
you get the stuff translated by people who don't at least have a minimal 
knowledge of emacs."

Thank you.

I now have some difficult decisions to make. GNU Emaccs is the best 
choice, given how seriously this group takes licensing, but the point of 
my project is to popularize powerful free tools among non-technical 
users for whom they could have a huge impact, such as the blind. But it 
is hard enough to convince people to adopt an entirely different working 
paradigm, i.e. interface, now I have to also convince them to adopt a 
new language? This essentially means keeping this tool reserved for a 
small fraction of the intellectual elites in each developing country. It 
is not exactly inspiring to work towards keeping the status quo.

Fernando


On 04/27/2017 12:07 PM, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>> On Apr 27, 2017, at 21:56, Fernando Botelho <Fernando.Botelho@F123.org> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Jean-Christophe and Paul for your responses.
>>
>> It is good to know that the i18n process is on-going. Is this "more languages group" operational via e-mail list? how can I join?
> If that's a question related to my answer, I have no idea :) I know about the French group that handles GNU programs, but I don't know if such groups exist in other languages.
>
>> Are there plans for l10n of the interface strings and command names, or is this postponed for now because of complexity?
> I participated to a discussion here about that a few years ago and the answer I got was "people who use emacs know English (or should) so there is no need for l10n in the UI"...
>
>> For areas where l10n is already happening, where can I join the effort, i.e. are there web interfaces where strings are shown and translations entered, or gettext/.POT files on a git repository somewhere?
> As far as I can tell, this is *not* happening. You should focus on translating documentation first, the Elisp reference, the Emacs manual, etc. Use po4a to get PO files from the texi sources and then use the process you prefer to translate that. I personally have created a collaborative translation project for the elisp reference, using OmegaT as the client. It is not progressing super fast because I'm the only one working on it. If you want to check it it's here:
>
> https://github.com/suzume/emacslispref
>
> If you don't know how to use OmegaT, it won't be of much help though. OmegaT is a free translation tool for professional translators.
>
>> Are there "how to" guides for non-technical translators who want to help?
> The problem with "non technical" translators is that then need to be minimally technical to at least understand emacs. I really don't suggest you get the stuff translated by people who don't at least have a minimal knowledge of emacs.
>
> Jean-Christophe