Re: Serbian (sr) language translation team: maintainer unresponsive

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

mån 2003-04-07 klockan 19.20 skrev Toma Jankovic:
> >> A month or so ago, the maintainer Tomislav Jovanoviã has started a web
> >> page at Savannah, and a corresponding mailing list. Seems encouraging,
> >> except that the only three messages sent to the list were by those
> >> asking how to contribute, without adequate answer. For the sake of
> >> "political correctness", I am also cc-ing this message to this list, and
> >> please keep it that way, so Tomislav might answer if he finds it
> >> appropriate.
> 
> >I haven't received responses from the Serbian coordinator either for
> >several months.
> 
> The main reason for this stop is a lack of good dictionary that could be used 
> for translation process. I am not working on it, but as far as I know It is 
> almost finished (parts of this dictionary was used for the OpenOffice 
> localization as well as for the Mandrake Linux localization) Because of that, 
> I could not yet start with translation process widely. I do not wish to 
> translate files that later must be retranslated.

Having a dictionary is a good start, but by no means necessary for
starting translation work. Translating is an iterative process, just as
our other free software development is. One creates translations, gets
new messages to translate and possibly also feedback, updates, gets new
messages and feedback and so on. Expecting everything to be perfect from
the start is an illusion, and I bet most translators agree.

In fact, I think not starting to translate just because of a lack of
dictionary is actually devastating to the task at hand: If there is a
Serbian translation, more people will notice it and possibly also take
interest in it and perhaps also decide to contribute to it in order to
make it even better. In many aspects and cases, being the coordinator
for a "new" language is much like getting a ball rolling. But in order
to get people's interest in a larger scale they must first see that
there is a ball to begin with.

So, in case your goal is to have such a perfect translation from start
that it will not require retranslation or updates, I think your goal
isn't realistic.


> Yes, this delay is not very good development, but it is jet more important to 
> get well translated Gnome that can be really used. 
> Anyway, if you wish someone else to do this, it is your call :) 

I fail to see how the lack of dictionary is responsible for the
unresponsiveness in email communication that I myself have witnessed, so
I personally actually do believe that someone else may be more suitable
as coordinator for the Serbian team, at least for the moment.
Any volunteers? Danilo?


Christian