Localization stuff?
Cédric Corazza
I watched the last "Mozilla Air" show...
I was told to talk about this in the newsgroup, so I do.
"spreadfirefox.com should be localized". Hey! Our fellow people are
visiting MoEu and the local sites (geckozone.org, sf.net.frenchmozilla,
and http://www.mozillazine-fr.org among others for the French speaking
people), which I suppose is enough. The content of spr.fx is almost all
in English (video, text, pictures). How could we localize that? Even for
the largest communities, it's hard to get the web site content and the
products to be localized properly and in the timeline.
Now, there is the new SUMO site which is supposed to land for
localization in October. Hey, we are dedicated to the Mozilla project,
but we have also our own "real life". And among the 40+ locales for
Firefox, how many could have this new site localized?
And I won't talk about AMO : we had many people who wanted to contribute
to localize descriptions, the extensions themselves, etc. and we don't
have a clue to lead them, no way to know the most "important" ones to
translate, the changes, etc. (unless I missed some of the numerous
newsgroups, blogs and whatever Mozilla related stuff I follow).
Regards
pascal
Hi Cédric,
I understand your concerns, I know that our localization needs both on
the product and website sides are growing much faster than our
localization teams, even for the biggest teams.
Currently, no localization team can fully translate all the web
resources we have, that's why most of this work is optional, that's why
I also always incitate people to work on ressources with the least human
maintenance cost over time and that's also why I constantly look for new
volunteers dedicated to web localization only to lighten the work load
on our products localizers.
The situation will progressively improve over time as we get new people
on board to help us (4 more localizers for Portuguese and Catalan
joined us this week for web localization for instance), but it will take
some time.
Regards,
Pascal
Axel Hecht
Hi,
as for sfx, I'll need to watch the recording, as I don't know the
question to the answer. I always considered sfx to be one of the least
suitable sites for spin-offs in different languages, so I have no idea
what "localizing sfx" really means.
As for all the other stuff coming up:
Every project we're working on get's evaluated in terms of international
users. And for every project, I and others repeat the mantra that it
should be localizable, and it should work without localization into any
particular language. Localization of SUMO is really first and foremost a
"we're not keeping you from using it in your language". The same idea is
likely to apply to whatever folks do on sfx. JT has a way of saying
things as motivating as he possibly can, which may sound much more
pushing than it really is. He is very aware that localizers will have to
opt in to offers for localizing particular services, which makes him
motivate a tad more, even ;-)
That said, we took some valuable ideas out of the MDC discussion in
Paris, and one of the big things to solve before opening up new stuff to
localizers is to find the right metrics to make it clear to localizers
how to proceed. Like, for SUMO, we're discussing "stable pages with many
hits". There may be other metrics, which folks interested in it should
discuss in m.support.planning. We had a phone call about that yesterday
and JT is going to reach out to those that volunteered to have that
discussion.
Reanimating the discussion on metrics for MDC is in the back of my head,
though I'll probably wait with that 'til next week to get chofmann on
that, too. He's been doing stuff with navigation paths, which might be a
useful addition.
For AMO, we should probably have a similar discussion. I could see that
some query like "give me all extensions without french descriptions,
ordered by popularity". Not sure if that should be webhits or downloads.
Anyway, if we come up with a metric for extension description l10n,
let's put it in a bug and get it live.
Wil, could you update http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Localizers to talk
about localizing extension descriptions, too?
As for localizing extensions itself, there are a few systems out there
like babelzilla, and we have been thinking a bit on how to expose on AMO
which system an extension is using. That discussion didn't come to a
conclusion, though.
Oh, and not to forget to say this out loud, there is not a single dash
of doubt that in any kind of compromise you want to make, it should be
applications first, website community candy second. Yet, as there is a
good bang for the buck, most folks driving the various projects are
hopeful that you can get new people to sign up for new projects in the
localization communities, too.
If there are things we can do to help that community building, I'm all
ears, as is Seth. I wonder how the MDC docathon in Poland worked out,
coming to think of it.
HTH
Axel
Stanis aw Ma olepszy
On 2 Sie, 12:29, Axel Hecht <l...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> If there are things we can do to help that community building, I'm all
> ears, as is Seth. I wonder how the MDC docathon in Poland worked out,
> coming to think of it.
We had the event happen on the weekend of 30.06 and 01.07. We called
it a sprint, but as Marcoos pointed out, it should have been called a
marathon instead ;-)
We divided the organization into three parts:
1. preparation, which included posting on our blogs, on the newsgroups
and informing online media to rise the awareness of the event. Thanks
to Mozilla Europe, we also had a few T-shirts to distribute among the
participants of the event, as well as a few Joost and Blip (a Polish
twitter-like site) beta-testing invites.
2. coordination of the event -- we took turns watching over
participants and helping them out on the IRC channel and also we made
sure there was always someone on the IRC, so as to keep things busy
and help the newcomers.
3. saying 'thank you' -- we sent the T-shirts to show our appreciation
for the participants.
1. Preparation
One week before the event, we sent information about it to a few
online news sites and newsgroups related to FLOSS, web standards and
web development.
- http://7thguard.net/news.php?id=5626
- alt.pl.mozilla:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.pl.mozilla/browse_frm/thread/111442b4936382c6/2c583c9fad40440c#2c583c9fad40440c
- pl.comp.lang.javascript:
http://groups.google.com/group/pl.comp.lang.javascript/browse_frm/thread/7218311ac3ff24b8/#
- pl.comp.www:
http://groups.google.com/group/pl.comp.www/browse_frm/thread/f3506f9cd09dede8/#
Also, we posted a piece on our team's site:
http://www.aviary.pl/2007/06/23/weekend-tlumaczenia-dokumentacji-javascript-na-mozilla-developer-center/
and created a separate category in our Wordpress (http://www.aviary.pl/
category/sprints/) to have an easy-to-grab RSS feed for all future
sprints (unfortunately I can't access the stats for the feed right
now).
On our wiki, we put a page for all sprints we may ever organize:
http://wiki.aviary.pl/Sprinty, where you can find the RSS feed I
mentioned above as well as access the page for a particular sprint
(only one currently -- http://wiki.aviary.pl/MDC_Sprint_01_JavaScript).
We listed our shifts on that page and put some basic information about
the scope of work and the exact time of the rendez-vous on the IRC
(Saturday and Sunday at 10am).
Regarding the scope of work, we asked our teammate, Ptak82, the MDC
l10n coordinator, to prepare a list of 25 articles to work on. We
chose the JavaScript documentation as our first target, and Ptak82
made a list for this sprint, but also prepared some more, for future
events:
- the first list:
http://developer.mozilla.org/pl/docs/U%C5%BCytkownik:Ptak82/Lista_stron_do_QA#Pierwszy_sprint_MDC_30.06_-_01.07.2007_r.
- the second list: http://developer.mozilla.org/pl/docs/U%C5%BCytkownik:Ptak82/Lista_stron_do_QA#Drugi_sprint_.3B.29_-
2. Coordinating the event
We took turns watching over the participants, according to the list we
made at http://wiki.aviary.pl/MDC_Sprint_01_JavaScript. We used a
Blip.pl account to communicate about the event while it lasted:
http://beta.blip.pl/aviary/blog.
In total, there were 15 people who participated in the event. 4 of the
from our team (Aviary.pl), 5 more existing editors of the MDC, and 6
newcomers! During the weekend, we had over 400 edits, and the initial
list of 25 articles turned out to be too short at the end of Saturday.
So on Sunday we took care of the second list with the articles Ptak82
had chosen for the next sprint :-)
The work continued after the weekend (more than 150 edits in the
JavaScript category over the week that followed the event), so I think
the sprint may be considered a success.
We also saw a few guys translate some non-JS-related articles while we
focused on the JS documentation.
During the event, we blogged about it a few times to keep people au
courant:
http://smalolepszy.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/pierwszy-sprint-mdc-dzien-1/
(in Polish)
http://blog.marcoos.com/2007/06/30/mdc-pl-sprint-1-day-1/
http://blog.marcoos.com/2007/07/02/mdc-pl-sprint-1-day-2/ (both in
English)
3. Saying 'thank you'
After the event, we sent a Firefox/MDC T-shirt to almost every
participant. We figured that since it was difficult to judge the
effort of the participant (is one translated paragraph worth more than
10 minor spelling edits?) we would give the T-shirts to everyone.
Since we didn't have enough, I sent the t-shirts first to the longtime
MDC contributors and the newcomers who participated, and then, as one
or two T-shirts were left, to the Aviary.pl members. I think Marcoos
is still waiting for his, although he did enormous work helping the
participants on Saturday, when no-one else could. Marcoos: I'll bring
you one, promise :-)
I'll gladly answer any questions you might have ragarding the
organization of the event. I'd love to see similar events organized
elsewhere :-)
HTH and good luck!
Cheers,
Staszyk
Axel Hecht
Crossposting to m.d.mdc, too.
Axel
Ricardo Palomares Martinez
> Hi,
> I watched the last "Mozilla Air" show...
I'm not sure which one are you referring to. Could you put the link here?
> I was told to talk about this in the newsgroup, so I do.
> "spreadfirefox.com should be localized". Hey! Our fellow people are
> visiting MoEu and the local sites (geckozone.org, sf.net.frenchmozilla,
> and http://www.mozillazine-fr.org among others for the French speaking
> people), which I suppose is enough. The content of spr.fx is almost all
> in English (video, text, pictures). How could we localize that? Even for
> the largest communities, it's hard to get the web site content and the
> products to be localized properly and in the timeline.
For spanish-speaking countries, there exists
http://difundefirefox.com/ (the domain name is basically the
translation to spanish of spreadfirefox.com). Of course, it is not
anything close to the english version in quantity and diversity; there
is just not enough people to create the same amount of material. They
have some banners and desktop wallpapers, and a blog about news,
extensions, development, etc.
Still, I'd say that it is better to have difundefirefox.com than
trying (and faling) to provide a spanish localized experience in
spreadfirefox.com.
> Now, there is the new SUMO site which is supposed to land for
> localization in October. Hey, we are dedicated to the Mozilla project,
> but we have also our own "real life". And among the 40+ locales for
> Firefox, how many could have this new site localized?
Don't know. Proyecto NAVE, or at least I, don't intend to enter into
SUMO localization as long as it is a Firefox-only based site (and I
don't think the current es-ES Firefox mantainer can take over that
huge task alone). There is more Mozilla than Firefox, and if we just
center ourselves on it, the rest of products/projects will have less
exposure and their presence will shrink, entering in a recursive
iteration until all Mozilla but Firefox die.
> And I won't talk about AMO : we had many people who wanted to contribute
> to localize descriptions, the extensions themselves, etc. and we don't
> have a clue to lead them, no way to know the most "important" ones to
> translate, the changes, etc. (unless I missed some of the numerous
> newsgroups, blogs and whatever Mozilla related stuff I follow).
I'd say that BabelZilla should play an important role here as a
meeting point for developers. AMO localization is fine from the user
point of view, but there is just not suitable mechanism for developers
to provide pre-release notices so localizers can get notified (and,
probably, neither the feedback from localizers to developers, but that
seems to be more easily fixable). However, I think that Bz has those
mechanisms; probably the smartest move would be that AMO get extension
developers aware of BabelZilla.
As more and more extensions get localized descriptions, more and more
extension authors will be interested in contacting localizers; I'm
pretty sure most of them don't really know yet that they can get his
extension completely localized for free.
Ricardo.
--
If it's true that we are here to help others,
then what exactly are the OTHERS here for?