[Localization] Indigenous language L10n processes

[mokurai at earthtreasury.org]

On Sun, July 24, 2011 1:51 am, Chris Leonard wrote:
> Dear Localization Community,
>
> There are a variety of methods for facilitating third language
> localization via an intermediate (non-English) language.  This is an
> important process for South American indigenous languages via Spanish
> (Aymara, Quechua, Nahuatl, Tzotzil, Huastec / Tének, etc.) as well as
> Francophone Africa and other circumstances where a non-English
> majority lingua franca overlaps an indigenous language.

I can see a future need for

* Spanish-->Catalan

* Portuguese-->languages of Brazil and some countries in Africa

* Russian-->languages of former Soviet Republics

* Chinese-->many minority languages in China

* Traditional Chinese<-->Simplified Chinese

This last cannot be done using simple character substitution tables, due
to many-one and one-many mappings, and to differences in terminology for
almost everything since the 1949 split between the usage areas,
particularly in computing.

I don't know whether Dutch is still an important intermediate language in
former Dutch colonies. There are clearly other minority languages in Asian
countries such as Thailand, Laos, Burma, and others that will benefit from
this approach.

> == Option 1 ==
>
> The Translate Toolkit has a tool called poswap which can process a
> translated PO file to replace the msgid with the mstgstr.  Starting
> with a completed Spanish PO file, you get Spanish strings in msgid.
>
> poswap
> http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/toolkit/poswap
>
> == Option 2 ==
>
> The folks at Runasimipi are working to translate software into Quechua:
>
> http://www.runasimipi.org/
>
> and they've developed a tool called instrans that can process a
> translated PO file to include the msgstr as a translator comment).
> Starting with a completed Spanish PO file, you get English strings in
> the msgid with Spanish strings (previously in the msgstr) as a
> translator comment.
>
> instrans
> http://www.runasimipi.org/instrans-en.html
>
>
> Please examine the product of these different processes as they appear
> on Pootle.
>
> poswap version (abacus)
> http://translate.sugarlabs.org/en/Sandbox/sample-es.abacus.po?view_mode=translate
>
> instrans version (abacus)
> http://translate.sugarlabs.org/en/Sandbox/sample-en-es.abacus.po?view_mode=translate
>
> Both versions should be fully functional in off-line editing
> situations with a tool like Virtaal (and important consideration).
> I'm less familiar with poedit or other off-line tools though, testing
> is encouraged.
>
> From a Pootle management point-of-view, the instrans processed files
> are probably easier to manage because they can be hosted in Pootle
> with commit links established and commits performed by the language
> administrator as usual, With poswap, I'm not sure that Pootle would
> properly handle commits where the msgid does not match the original
> POT and manual intervention would probably be needed to reverse the
> poswap process and return the msgids to English for commit.
>
> Ease of management is one element to weigh, but ease of localization
> is obviously the critical piece of the puzzle.
>
> Do you think that instructing the indigenous localizers to pay
> attention to the translator comments would be adequate cueing for
> successful Spanish to Huastec L10n (as one example) on the instrans
> processed PO files?
>
> I look forward ot hearing your thoughts on this.  In an ideal world,
> we would adopt a single standard process for addressing these
> situations when they arise rather than having a mix of solutions for
> different languages, so a broad range of feedback is desirable as are
> alternatives to the one's I've proposed.  I suspect some
> experimentation will be required to fully explore these options (e.g.
> to fully understand how each works with gettext plurals, pre-existing
> translator comments and other edge cases).
>
> Warmest Regards,
>
> cjl
> volunteer Sugar Labs / OLPC / eToys Poolte administrator
> _______________________________________________
> Localization mailing list
> Localization at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization
>


-- 
Edward Mokurai
(默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks