Announcing the Open Source Translation Database

[Andrew Smith <asmith16 littlesvr ca>]

Hello

I'm trying to reach as many open source software developers and i18n 
people, so that's why the random post from me here :)

Translating software is hard, I know from my experience of starting two 
new open source projects (ISO Master and Asunder) about the challenges 
of learning how to use Gettext, finding volunteers to do the 
translations, encouraging and enabling them to translate my software.

The work was worth it for me, I now have almost 70 full translations of 
my software in 40 languages. But I'd like to make the process of getting 
your first translation easier, and generally help more software 
maintainers to get more translations with less effort.

The OSTD ( http://littlesvr.ca/ostd/ ) is an automatic translations 
system - it will take your .POT file and populate it with translations 
based on strings in other open source software, generating .PO files. 
Given that you can see which software the strings come from - this will 
be much more accurate than other automatic translation systems such as 
Google Translate.

I just started the project so there is a lot of polish still coming, and 
some significant features such as updating existing .PO files and a web 
service interface for other software to use. But it can be useful as it 
is already. Please try it out!

Any feature requests and bug reports are welcome. My goal is to make it 
as useful as possible to as many people as possible. I'm doing this part 
time, but I'm excited about the project and will do my best to improve 
it as quickly as possible.

Andrew