[Grassroots-l] squeakland.org translation priorities

[Timothy Falconer]

Hi everyone,

We're translating most of the Squeakland (Etoys) website right now  
into Spanish and Portuguese, with French soon to come.

You can help too . . . simply claim your language and reply to this  
message (to avoid duplication), then read the following:

http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-480
http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-481


We're also writing some grants now, some of which are aimed at our  
translation efforts.

Given this, I'm trying to determine a good translation priority list,  
which shows the order of languages we want to focus on most.  Yes,  
we'll get translations first from people that volunteer, and that  
won't always correspond to the priority list.  But our time (and  
future hopeful funds) are limited, so we'd like to concentrate on the  
languages that will reach the most new and existing Etoys users.

To get the conversation started, here are the most popular languages  
in the world:

1. Chinese *
2. Spanish
3. English
4. Hindi *
5. Arabic *
6. Bengali *
7. Portuguese
8. Russian
9. Japanese
10. Korean
11. German
12. French

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers 
, and several other sources)

Perhaps more telling is this list, which shows the number of wikipedia  
articles, which may be a better indicator of computer and web use:

1. English
2. French
3. German
4. Spanish
5. Portuguese
6. Italian
7. Japanese
8. Russian
9. Dutch
10. Polish
11. Chinese
12. Swedish

(from http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php?sort=total_desc)


More direct to Etoys is our new list of "Squeakers", which has a graph  
at the bottom that shows number of users by country:

1. United States (english/spanish)
2. Germany (german)
3. Uruguay (spanish)
4. Brazil (portuguese)
5. Canada (english/french)
6. Argentina (spanish)
7. Austria (german)
8. Spain (spanish)
9. Colombia (spanish)
10. Bolivia (spanish)
11. Japan (japanese)
12. Netherlands (dutch)

(from http://squeakland.org/squeakers/ ... add your name and country!)


Clearly, these languages merit special effort:

1. English
2. Spanish
3. German
4. Portuguese
5. French

And these represent known areas of Etoys use:

6. Japanese
7. Korean
8. Haitian Kreyol
9. Nepali

Three more to make a list of twelve:

10. Russian
11. Italian
12. Dutch

Do you agree with this list of twelve?   What would you add?   Where  
would you put it in the list, and why?

We of course want to have all languages represented someday,  
particularly the starred items in the first list.

We're simply trying to set our immediate goals, given limited time and  
resources.

Take care,
Tim

--
Timothy Falconer
Squeakland Foundation
http://squeakland.org
610-797-3100
--
"Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do."  ...  
piaget




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