[Ossm-members] sliki od belgrad + dokumenti od belgrad

[Новица Наков]

Еве 11кб бонус текст (ваљда ќе пројде на листа). Некои заклучоци од 
конференцијата.

conclusions.txt е на Vedran Vucic (организаторот)
EPconclusions.txt е на Eddy Petrisor (еден момак од Романија).

За документиве важи Verbatim copying and distribution.

-- 
Новица

Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist.
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Ideas and Conclusions after the Localization conference
Belgrade (1-3 july 2005)
by Eddy Petriºor


During the first three days of July, Belgrade was the place for localization 
talks and discussions in the Balkans area.

The call was made to all the countries in the area by Linux Center's 
(Belgrade) representative, Vedran Vucic. Supported by Open Society Foundation, 
this conference couldn't have been a failed effort. And it was not.

Participants from Bosnia and Hertzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, 
Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro came to expose what they have 
learned and to learn from each other what could be done to improve their lifes
as translators for applications and documentation in the Free Software world.

The Hungarians tought us how to make money for our organizations, in order to
use them for special events; the Bosnians and others told us about the 
translation marathons, a way to get huge amounts of translation done in a 
short time, with the downside of a not so unitary translation, if the rules
are not set correctly.

The Croatians showed us the localization framework that they use, a great
tool, which I promised to make public for Debian, after the Croatians
translate it into English. Experience talked through the mouth of the
Bulgarian representative, as he told us about the downside of the translation
marathons.

Serbians made us aware of the fact that some English phrasings are
untranslatable in their language, so they asked us to help them in making free
software developers aware of these problems.

Romanians started a road trip together with the Serbians in building
infrastructures for default localized desktop environments in their own
languages, colaborating with each other in the technical field to make their
goals possible in the Debian distribution. This will envolve specialized tasks 
for the tasksel program, aspell dictionaries, packaging and supporting each
other with information regarding their findings, promoting each other's ideas
within the Debian distribution and many other things.

The organizers promised to create a dedicated site for the colaboration of
people involved in localization in the Balkans area. Also a mailing list was
promised, thus opening the gates for colaboration between all the interested
people in the area.

Before the mailing list would happen, before the site would be up, the
participants exchanged email addresses in order to start their colaboration
before the things were official.

If you thought that free software is just a bunch of hippies that have no
purpose in life but to discuss about freedom without doing anything through
official ways, well you were wrong. Some official organizations sent their
representatives to prove us: Free Software Hungary, I-Space from Bulgaria and
Metamorphosis from Macedonia showed us that free software has a practical 
meaning and use; having an official organization to promote it is a good thing
for a country and a gain for everybody.

As a conclusion, the conference in Belgrade was just the opening for a series
of events that will get together people around the Balkans, and probably other
areas, too, in order to help them understand each other's problems and
overcome the issues that stop or slow them in reaching their goal of fully
localized applications, starting with the interface and covering the manuals
and help documentation.


Appendix A
Stupid people learn only through their own experience, smart people through
everybody's

- translation marathons are good, but the downside must be avoided through a
  good recompensation system
- gettext support is still incomplete, as the support for cases and genders is
  scarce; support is needed
- political problems must be circumvented; we don't need to get involved in
  them
- get the money from firms for your work and if the firms do not share, use
  the experience and money in a translation marathon to cover the coresponding
  free software counter part
- some firms are open to colaboration - they would do a part of the 
  translation, while we do the other
- a unique project per language is the first step towards success
- home grown sofware can exchanged in order to facilitate everybody's work
- most users would use free software, if localized
- for glosary management, translators can be assigned grades, higher grade
  means higher trust
- other translators or people can be interested to deliver exactly what you
  want for your language, so ask first, you might find help
- there are many places that support free software projects, use them
- managing translations can only be made through a standardized method, so
  version control systems, l10n frameworks, glosaries are the base of a
  successful l10n project
- free software tools are available, use them; if none satifies you, expand
  an existing one, or create a new one - use a free license for the tools you
  make and share with others, they will thank you


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Conclusions from the Conference on Localization and Translation of Free Software and Documentation


	Since the participants at the conference reported each other on localization/translation efforts in their own respective countries, we have had a lot of information for discussion and evaluation of mentioned efforts.  Thus, our discussion was based on efforts that have been made so far, the current state of the localization/translation efforts and future prospects f  or the future localization/translation efforts.
Due to similarity of methods and projects and focused reports it was obvious that efforts that have been undertaken so far may beconsidered as successfull.  However, there are lessons that may be drawn too.  After exchange of opinion and experience we concluded that:

1.The efforts have been based on localization/translation marathons and individual efforts with very variable amount of contributions by the volunteering localizers/translators.  Number of contributions rapidly decrease after marathons though sometimes they do have very good quality.
2.Marathons resulted in a huge quantity of translated material but, consistency and quality were unpredictable and professional translators have been asked to correct inconsistencies and improve quality
3.Marathons did have sometimes serious management issues and it is concluded that massive involvement of volunteers in localization/translation projects should be based on prior testing, selection and evaluation of work done by localizers/translators
4.Majority of efforts have been focused on localization of software i.e. interfaces and in a much smaller part on translation of documentation.  Thus, translation of documentation should be addressed much more.
5.Web interfaces prove to be successfull interfaces for contributions from various volunteers.  Various designs made by developers in the countries from the region should be exchanged so everyone can have an opportunity to improve their own web interfaces.
6.Due to inconsistency of formats of created documents there is need for training on software that is aimed for documentation creation such as DocBook, LaTeX, TeX etc. since many people involved in such projects are not familiar with such software packages.
7.There is need to create a repository of localized/translated material with links to the projects in the region and forums where they can discuss certain issues and exchange opinion and experience, technical solutions
8.Since some states do have policy of negation of existence of certain minorities we concluded that NGOs and individuals that are involved in localization/translation projects should help minorities in other and their own countries regardless of official state policy on existence of respective minorities.
9.NGOs that are involved or leading localization/translation efforts should contact companies that may be interested in helping them to realize thier localization/translation projects i.e. Novell, Sun Microsystems etc.
10.In cases where state policy is not defined in issues of announcing official grammar rules, dictionnaires etc. people involved in tjose projects should use existing grammar rules and consult linguists when necessary.  Small differences in approach to grammar rules and language policy that may be exposed by linguists and politicians should not prevent realization of those projects, since software is aimed to the users and if users do need localized software then small variations should not be obstacle to the user to use software.  Corrections of cases, gender and similar language specific characteristics may be done manually regardless of the fact that some localization software packages are not gender sensitive or that some word suffixes may look clumsy.  Cultural characteristic is more important than feature of localization software.
12.  The current status is that after a couple of years of being involved in localization and translation projects a relatively small number of people are still very active in the field and that they should do more on translation of documentation and adding localizations to new versions of software.  However, a lot of material have been already translated though there must be more emphasis on documentation and adopting of manulas for various types of users i.e. beginners, intermediate etc.
13. There is need for networking since there is still enthusiasm for helping those who are not technically skilled and providing them with access to localized free software.
14. Concrete cooperation projects i.e. road shows, camps etc. may strengthen links between localizers/translators in the countries from the region and help their ethnically very mixed populations to have access to free software
        

	Concrete proposals as a follow up of the conference:


1.Linux Centre will create a repository/portal for the regional cooperation in the localization/translation of free software and documentation.
2.Localizers/Translators  from Bulgaria and Macedonia will cooperate regardless of restrictive policies of their states concerning ethnic minorities
3.Linux roadshows between Serbia and Hungary are planned to be organized in order to introduce Hunagrian minority in Serbia and Serbian minority in Hungary to use localized free software and use GPLed software developed by Hungarian particpant in order to localize/translate free software
4.Serbian localizers will help localizers in Bosnia and Herzegovina in their efforts related to linguistcs and use of cyrillic letter in their projects
5.Romanian participants from the conference is willing to help networking between Serbian efforts in order to help Roma and socially deprivileged to have access to localized free software and documentation
6.Macedonian particpants will propose soon concrete projects for cooperation with Serbian partners
7.Croatian developer of their localization/translation web interface will be at disposal to other localization/translation web interface developers to improve their own web interfaces.  However, his web interface is GPLed and is free to use,