On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 11:13:54AM +0800, Tommy He wrote:
Hello,
As a member of Fedora Chinese user group, personally I think that The
Open Source Way would be a great help to the growing Fedora Community
in Greater China. Before start translating it into Chinese, I would
like to hear your valuable advice on the following questions:
1. What is the plan of localization for TOSW? So far I am unable to
find specific wiki pages on this topic. I would be very pleased to
hear from Red Hat Community Architecture team and many other
contributors on this topic.
2. If the localization for TOSW could work, what is the ideal place to
host this Chinese copy? If possible, a branch of TOSW wiki would be
the best place IMO. But if there are some practical difficulties, will
it be OK if hosting this on other places(have not decided yet)?
These are great questions. I'm very excited that you are interested
in doing this translation.
I have thought about localization from the start, and generally have
copied the tools and processes used in the production of the Fedora
release notes. A method like this:
1. Write original copy in English on the wiki;
2. Convert that copy to XML;
3. Use PO/POT to handle i18n;
4. Build HTML & PDF in all languages.
So right now the wiki has newer content than is in XML:
https://fedorahosted.org/tosw/
The plan is to update the XML regularly from the work on the wiki; we
are overdue for an update.
One other challenge: the writing is not written well for
translation. I have experience writing technical material for
translation, and this book breaks many of the rules. It uses idioms,
breaks rules of grammar, and has a strong narrative voice.
My goal was to get a lot of content in there and work on rewriting it
over time. For now, I think we can do a close collaboration with
writer and translator. For example, when the idioms in a passage are
unclear, we discuss on list what it means, possibly change the source
to a new version, and so forth.
Perhaps there are a few folks who want to work on the wiki to XML
updating? I'll be training people how to do it while working
alongside. Perhaps we can schedule a work sprint?
- Karsten
--
name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team: Red Hat Community Architecture
uri:
http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg: AD0E0C41