[kde-edu]: Thoughts on KDE-Educationals in general

[Sabine Emmy Eller]

Hi, I also wanted to answer to this mail in particular:


> I am not very familiar with KDE localization for now. Through the website
> I
> > cannot understand in how many languages the applications are already
> > available and how we can translate them into other languages (for example
> > Udmurt). Is there a special team that cares about educationals? Or just
> the
> > localisation mailing list?
> >
> Translation stats for kdeedu you find here:
> http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable-kde4/package/kdeedu/
>
> KDE releases are usually shipped with around 50-60 language translations,
> but
> not all of them have a fully translated kdeedu modul.
>
> There is no Udmurt translation team, neither in KDE/Gnome or elsewere.
> If anybody wants to translate kdeedu applications, please do it inside the
> kde
> translation teams. Avoid separate/independent translations as done in
> Launchpad/Rosetta, that is a complete desaster and has often destroyed the
> existion translation for kdeedu application like e.g. KTurtle.
>
> We have no special translation team for kdeedu, only some translators /
> team
> coordinators (like me) interested in edu on this list. And of course the
> I18n
> coordinator Albert Astals Cid (KGeography maintainer) is subscribed here.
>

Well it is very clear that each application should have only ONE place where
its translation is maintained. The problem with languages like Udmurt,
Neapolitan, many African languages is that there are only very few people
who could work on a UI. It would be anyway a fulltime job and those who do
the job should be paid in order to be able to do only that. The problem here
is sponsors :-) If you do this only with volunteer contributions it takes
ages to get a language on the way. Well, sponsors are needed (one of the
reasons why I added the possibility to get donations - hopefully something
comes in that can be used for such jobs - for some African languages only
very few is actually needed -  but ... it will always be just a drop).

What probably makes most sense to start off with is getting single
applications in local language where the localization effort is not too
much. For Udmurt for example the general UI, until a community grows around
the language, could remain in Russian, while certain single applications
could get their UI in the local language.

Btw. I am in contact with Martin Benjamin of the Anloc project
http://www.africanlocalisation.net/ - they are creating the basic locales
for approx. 200 languages right now, of course not all of them took off, but
I see that way of doing things as a good starting point: those locales will
be available in xml format so that they can be transformed into TMX and
therefore used in CAT-Tools like Virtaal to do .po file translations.

Anloc will also be used to create starting points for Parley for many
African languages :-)

I am subscribed to the localization mailing list, but I have that 24
hours/day problem ... if I only could extend to at least 48 (actually 72
would be better). So I need to concentrate on some few things until we find
people who maybe take over the contents creation lead for specific
languages.

Well all for now - I could go on writing for quite some time, but it would
not help much :-)

Have a great Sunday!

Sabine
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