[wilhelmtux-discussion] Experiences from translating free software?

[Sascha Brawer]

Dear translation team:

I recently came across your web site (<http://translate.org.za/>) and
found it very interesting.

In Switzerland, we are thinking about starting a project for translating
free software into Romansh, which is a romance language spoken in some
alpine areas of Switzerland (<http://www.liarumantscha.ch/en/>). In this
context, I was wondering whether you might be able to give us any advice
on organizing a project for translating software, especially into
languages that possibly lack some of the needed technical terms.

Did you possibly produce a list of difficult-to-translate terms like
"character set", "color table" etc.? (If so, I'd be grateful if you were
able to send it to me.) Do you try to ensure that terminology is
consistent? If so, how?

How long did it take you to translate OpenOffice, Mozilla, KDE, and other
programs? Do you ask translators to compile the translated software
themselves, or do they just send you translations ("pot files")? Do you
plan to forward the translations to the maintainers of upstream sources?

I found it interesting that you apparently found the OpenOffice
localization system hard to use. What exactly was the problem with it?

Can you give any general advice from your experience?

Thank you very much in advance, and best regards,

-- Sascha Brawer
   brawer at dandelis.ch, http://www.dandelis.ch/people/brawer/