[libreoffice-l10n] Bavarian and Nipmuck - report

Somehow the mail client ate most of my email, reposting, sorry...


---


Sorry for the delay in responding, Im travelling.


I think I disagree with most things that have been said in this discussion so far.


Let me try and go through them one by one...


1) Orthography


Terrible reason to turn down a project. Most l10n projects LO has involve languages where spellling 
is a potentially contentious issue. Perhaps the really big locales have very settled spelling 
systems but even they are not immune. For example, I doubt that anyone is enforcing either pre or 
post spelling reform spellings in the German project. Some locales actually deliberately use l10n 
to help standardize spelling.


2) Team size


Errr no. 1 dedicated locaizer is more than enough. I have a day job and I also do virtually all the 
l10n work on Mozilla, LO, WorPress (both), VLC, and several other projects. In fact, a single 
localizer can be more effective in some instances provided they put in sufficient time and effort. 
In fact having a team for Scottish Gaelic initially would have been a hindrance, not a help because 
there would have been ENDLESS debates around terminology and spelling. In a non-standardized 
language, a single translator can produce translations which are superior than those of a team, 
provided they are fluent and generally good with technology.


3) Its extinct or critically endangered
Well, so is Scottish Gaelic, less than 60k speakers is hardly a stadium full of people... l10n is a 
key part of any revitalization effort in a society which is not cut off from technology. It is 
perhaps the one way in which a marginalized language can gain a foothold on the screens of the next 
generation, small as it may be. A program with a UI in a marginalized language has a big wow factor 
if done well. If you localize Diablo III into German, people just expect that, its not news. 
Translate it into Nipmuck and itll be all over the airwaves.


Wikipedia or even Ethnologue are not the pinnacle of information when it comes to smaller 
languages. On several occasions have I come across languages marked as extinct in one, but not the 
other or vice versa or even where both were simply wrong. For example, they had a Basque Creole 
lumped in with a Romani language code in once instance.


4) Better to translate literature


Yes and no. Im a very good localizer but Im totally useless at translating literature or poetry or 
songs. Its called a specialism, no translator worth their money translate EVERYTHING. Id be equally 
useless at writing non-technical content.


5) Start with documentation/help

No.It would raise the wrong expectations, if you give the average user a screen that says Filte, 
unless highly cynical, they would expect the rest in the same lingo too.


As to the Help, who reads the Help? Ever? Unless they dont have web access. Even if some folk use 
it, its the worst starting point and a soul-destroying task.


6) Professors say to prioritise proofing


Maybe but that depends on the locale. To create a spellchecker you first need either really good 
dictionary or ody of well spelled texts, plus someone who can do code to some extent because doing 
a Hunspell package is not entirely straight forward. Grammar checkers are equally nice but not a 
priority to begin with I would say. Small languages often have not codified their grammar fully and 
thus if you just write some rules, youll just annoy everybody.


In the end, these are just opinions. They are neither uniform (I disagree for one) not are they 
based on research.


7) Firefox


That is actually the best alternative suggestion Ive heard in this debate. It might make sense to 
look into that. But either way, LO and Firefox are both must-haves really so it doesnt make that 
much of a difference which one you start with. Firefox, since it has Android and iOS versions now, 
would get you more bang for your buck faster though to begin with


8) Machine Translation


Worst idea ever. MT relies on massive bilingual corpora - and thats just the start of the 
headaches. The last thing a language like Nipmuck needs is a MT system that cost them huge 
resources to produce and which outputs semi-gibberish at best. Irish is in a much better position 
regarding English/Irish data and yet Google Translate produces Irish which either makes you laugh 
yourself silly or makes you cry.
Long story short, my view is, welcome to both, just have a moment to consider the implications 
regarding time/effort/other challenges and if you still think its a good idea, good on you.


Michael


-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: l10n+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/l10n/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted