On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 03:01:37PM -0700, Bastian, Waldo wrote:
> >There are so many localized development efforts, but sometimes
> >they are not put back to the upstreams. In most of cases,
> >there are some mis or no communications because of language barrier.
>
> So what can be done to overcome such barrier? I'm inclined to think of
> bi-langual liasion persons, or maybe a liason group whose mission it is
> to facilitate the integration of patches in upstream projects. Not sure
> how scalable that is. The extra indirection would also be a bit of a
> drag on the efficiency of the whole process. What do other people think
> about this?
For Inkscape, we've been successful at involving speakers of other
languages. Examples of steps we as a project have taken to help
facilitate and encourage this involvement:
* When non-English speakers say they would like to help but cannot
code, we always suggest translation as a great way to contribute.
Often when they finish this, they will continue participation in
other areas (coding, documentation, user support, PR, admin...)
* Permit non-English discussion on IRC channels and mailing lists.
(Good way to find if your bots accept utf-8. *grin*)
* Give recognition to translators in About screen.
* Created a mailing list specifically for translators.
* Articles in language-specific online/print magazines
* When sufficient users of a given language exist, we establish a
language-specific user mailing list, if they wish.
* Facilitate translation of the main website, manuals, tutorials, etc.
* Seek out user communities for poorly supported languages to try to
recruit new translators.
Translators are important because in many ways they serve as that
liaison from the project to other speakers of that language who are less
comfortable in that language.
Often we have been approached by the GNOME translation team about moving
Inkscape to GNOME CVS so that their translators can do bulk-updates of
our translations as they translate other things. For various reasons we
haven't done that, and instead built our own translation community; this
happened to work out quite well for us because the people we gain find
all sorts of ways to help beyond just doing translations of the software
interface.
Anyway, I don't know what generalities can be drawn from this, but I
definitely agree that having bi-lingual liaisons around can be very
valuable. We've gained them because we do our own translations, but I
imagine there are other ways to build up language communities.
Bryce
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