My name is Laura Arjona and
my name is Francesca Ciceri
And this is the localization workshop
Localization or translation. We say localization because its the process
that envolve a bit more than translation. Maybe you also need
to change date formats or the text orientation, or to have a
software in your own language. Ok?
For this to be done the software needs to be prepared and this process
of preparing the software is internalization. Is a software engineering process
to make a program ready for translation. So people not beeing programers can
translate the software.
And debian is very well internationalized so we have lots of things we can translate
without even touching a line of code.
The debian installer, the debconf templates that Miriam talked a bit ago,
the descriptions of the packages, when you search for package website or the
software center or in synaptics or anything, the manuals documentation
of debian I mean, and of course the information that the Debian Project
produces, the website, the press releases, the debian project news, wiki, everything
So for many people the most important thing is the debian installer.
That you can install debian, many people dont know english or they dont want to use
english, so its nice that debian installer is in their own language and thanks for
Christian Perrier and all the people in the different language teams,
we have the installer in many languages and we are still improving that, ok ?
No? Yeah! this is your turn ...
Thank you, ok! Then there are debconf template, Miriam told about debconf
messages in the previous talk, and they are messages sent by the system when you
are installing a new package and they just need ask on a prompt to the user
about configuring the package and so.
And there are translatable files, po files and you can use different tools to
translate them, as the translation is done is submitted directly to the bug tracking
system - the BTS to the relevant package. And there are stats ...
We will do it ...
My laptop is dying ... You have to support it ...
Wait a minute we have a backup laptop...
I'm back ...
And here are the stats for the translation of debconf messages from the different
teams, you can see that Spanish is at 95 % so you're not doing perfectly, but
you're doing well, better than Italian at least, and Catalan is 45% , you need to
work more , really really. Ok
You can also translate or help translating the descriptions of the packages. And this
is an interface very, very easy, you just have the description in english and
here's a text box where you put the same description in your language, and press a
button, submit and that's all. Later another person can review it, and improve
it, but its very easy, you don't have to do anything, just go to one webpage, read
and translate to your language.
There's other documents that we use to translate...
The release notes and the installation guide which we translate them obviously
with each new release, and there are other manuals that are not as much updated, so
the as the translation is done there's not much to do.
And this kind of documentation is managed by the debian documentation project that
has a specific workflow and a specific repository, all this kind of translations:
the debconf messages, the website, the documentation have their own workflow.
They are managed sometimes by different teams besides the local language team.
And finally the website, I said before that the installer was very important but
the debian website is very important too, because people need to go there to
download debian and if they cannot understand the website probably they
will manage to download the iso file and install it. Also the website is something
that's all the time producing new content and updating content, so there is always
work to be done in the website translation team. And is also quite easy, just like
someone said before, just read and send emails, this is the same.
The most important thing is to understand the philosophy, its a team work, your
work needs to be reviewed by other people and you need to review the translations
that other people do, if you do like that everything goes very well.
And we have also a robot (a bot) that understand emails the similar way
sent to the bug tracking system for the translations we just sent that read the
subject with the file that you want to translate and what you going to do with
that. The robot understands that and generate the pages with the statistics
and the situation of each file so everybody knows in each situation is the
translation. As you understand as it works its very easy to continue work that was
done by other people. From the beginning can be very strange but it works very well.