[Xfce-i18n] Introduction and proposal

[Og Maciel]

Hi all,

My name is Og Maciel and for the last 2 years I have been heavily
involved with the translation process of open sourced software.  Along
the way I have joined several groups, most notably becoming the lider
for the Ubuntu Brazilian group and initiating the project that took
GNOME from 73% translated (pt_BR) to 100% with the release of GNOME
2.18.  We're looking forward to doing the same with GNOME 2.20 too!
;)

We (some of the GNOME/Ubuntu members and I) have directly contacted
the 2 person listed as the current coordinators for the Brazilian XFCE
translation team (Adriano Winter Bess and Rodrigo Coacci) and were
informed that their participation has been cut down to a minimum due
to lack of time (believe me, I know that first hand :)).  Rodrigo
mentioned that by simply sending our patches/suggestions to the
mailing list would suffice to get them revised and approved by
someone.  While this approach would suffice for some people, we have a
different "method" that may prove advantageous to the XFCE project.
So if you all bear with me for a few more paragraphs, I'd like to make
a proposal.

The GNOME/Ubuntu members have decided to unify our efforts to create a
single point of reference for Brazilian translation teams by
leveraging the existing know-how from the Brazilian Linux
Documentation Project branch.  The goal is to create an unified
"repository" of vocabulary terms and knowledge so that the several
Brazilian translation organizations can share a "standardized" and
common vocabulary across the plethora of open sourced software
available nowadays.  This is a project still in development but has
yielded some solid results, such as the release of GNOME 2.18 and the
translation for a great deal of packages for the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
release!

The translations performed by both teams has followed a very organized
roadmap, whereby collaborators "adopt" packages that are in need of
translation and listed in our wikis.  These collaborators add their
names to the specific package and not only finish the transltion as
well as revise the entire message catalog, applying the knowledge
collected in our "knowledge repository" so to standardize the
translations performed from the previous translation cycles (before we
started our join effort).  The final product is a complete
translation/revision which can then be used by any distribution!

Collaborators are urged to share their questions/doubts via our
mailing lists and there has been talk about unifying this process by
the adoption of a "unified" mailing list for Brazilian translators!

My proposal is as follows:  Some of our collaborators have expressed a
deep interest in applying the same process of translation and revision
to the XFCE packages!  What is the advantage of doing this if XFCE is
nearly 100% finished/translated, you may ask?  To ensure that a
Brazilian Portuguese speaker will see a standardized vocabulary and
experience, no matter which distro or windows manager he/she may end
up using!  Obviously, there is nothing stopping us from sending in our
patches but the revision process could be the bottle neck for a timely
release.  So I'd like to ask if we can have either a single point of
contact for getting our patches revised/committed OR maybe have some
of our members granted commit access based on their current activity
records for the GNOME and Ubuntu teams?

If you all agree with this latter option, I'd provide you with a list
of names/emails so that you can familiarize yourselves with our work
and background.

For those who stayed awake during the length of this email, thank you
for your time and hope to hear back from you soon!

Cheers,
-- 
Og B. Maciel

omaciel at foresightlinux.org
ogmaciel at gnome.org
ogmaciel at ubuntu.com

GPG Keys: D5CFC202

http://www.ogmaciel.com (en_US)
http://blog.ogmaciel.com (pt_BR)