[Foundation-l] (Important) Survey translators needed

[Lars Aronsson]

Erik Moeller wrote:

> This is a key project to study our contributors & our audience. 
> The more languages we can translate to, the better. :-)
> 
> If you are willing to translate from English into another 
> language, please:

I really wish I could feel enthusiasm for such a call.  But 
already within the Wikimedia Foundation there are translations of 
the Mediawiki software, additional translation of Messages on the 
local installation of each wiki, there are translations of 
fundraisers on meta.wikimedia.org, and then there is betawiki.
In addition to all the Wikipedia articles and policies that are 
more or less translated between languages.

And outside of the Wikimedia Foundation, there are tons of 
projects that each run their own volunteer translation effort, 
including OpenOffice, Mozilla, KDE, GNU/Linux, and LibraryThing.

Now this survey needs to be translated, so therefore we need to 
invent yet another interface and yet another list of volunteer 
translators.  Really?

Often enough one signs up as a volunteer translator on some 
project only to be met with requests from some complete idiot who 
asks for a translation of phrases without context, such as "car" 
(is that an automobile or a railway car?), or "character" (a 
person, a moral property, or a letter of the alphabet?).

It's a big turn-off.  No intelligent person wants to work with 
idiots. So when you ask for more volunteer translators, *you* need 
to provide some indication:

 * that you have already used existing lists of translated 
   messages, and you only need help with the extras,

 * that you will never ask for translations of the names of months 
   or weekdays, since that is already part of free software for 
   localization,

 * that you have already used existing interfaces and communities 
   for translation volunteers, and won't invent new ones,

 * that you have an idea of what it means to provide useful 
   context to the phrases you want translated,

 * that you will publish the list of translated phrases so the 
   next project that comes along can benefit from it.

Or else you will only attract the utter beginners who never 
translated anything before, and never asked those questions.

> I am maintaining an internal assignment spreadsheet. We will try 
> to pair up translators & translation reviewers for each 
> language. You'll receive the questions in OpenOffice and Excel 
> format - use whichever suits you best.

*Sigh*.  This is not for me.



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se