[Foundation-l] leaflets

[Nikola Smolenski]

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Guillaume Paumier wrote:
>> I think you're mixing two very different matters. What needs to 
>> be translated or adapted is the content, i.e. the *text*. And 
>> each language should write their own text, because it's always 
>> better than translation. On the other hand, there's the design 
>> and the layout, which don't change across languages. Once the 
>> text is written, it takes nothing to add it to an existing 
>> layout.
> 
> I absolutely agree that we should write our own texts.  But 
> Swedish wikipedians don't spontaneously come up with a 16 page 
> brochure about how to edit Wikipedia. Even if I show them the 
> printed "Das kleine Wikipedia-Einmaleins", they just shake their 
> heads and don't understand more than two words of the title, even 
> if they took German in school.  What they need is a rough 
> translation that they can read, and use as inspiration, before 
> they can get started in writing a useful version in their own 
> language.  And far more people can read English than German.
> 
> I have started to translate this particular text to Swedish, as a 
> first step towards producing a useful Swedish version, but that 
> won't help all the people who need to write one in Polish, Czech, 
> Thai or Spanish.  If someone could please translate the text of 
> such brochures to English, it would be very useful.

FWIW, we translated the Guide to Serbian (still haven't printed it 
though), and it could serve as source for some of the surrounding 
languages. But I definitely agree that English translation would speed 
up its adoption.