[l10n] Status of "new" translations of Debian Installer

[Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>]

This mail is a short status report of the activity on potential new
translations for Debian Installer. It reflects part of the active
lobbying activity for getting D-I translated to more and more
languages.

Most of these languages won't probably make it for sarge but, well,
life does not end with sarge, right ? :-)

(of course, besides the languages below, we currently have 40
already supported languages (>50% translation ratio))

Serbian    : No progress after initial contacts with the translator
Latvian    : Slowly progressing
Vietnamese : Stucked, waiting for new manpower from the vi l10n
             coordinator
North. Sami: No progress. Skolelinux people still seeking some translator
Hindi      : Needs a graphical installer. I'm still thinking
             that some already existing translations would motivate
             the work on a graphical D-I but, well, that does not
             seem enough for motivating translators..:-)
             Same for other Indic script languages
Malagasy   : Locale built and proposed to the locales maintainers
             Translator begins working on the translation
             (Malagasy is the language from Madagascar)
Wolof      : Very early but promising contacts.
             We're beginning to build a wo_SN locale
             (Wolof is the major language from Senegal)
Igbo       : Early contacts with potential translator
             (Igbo is spoken in Nigeria)
Tamazight  : Some interest received
             (Tamazight==Kabyle, spoken in Algeria and Marocco and by 
              a wide community in France....and a language I love
              to hear)

As you can see, some progress is happening for African languages. Th
race is opened for being the first complete African language in Debian
Installer. And I'm still hoping to find some motivated translators in
South-Africa.

All this is of course not closed and I still encourage all those of
you who have some contact in currently non covered communities to try
finding some people volunteering for that kind of work.

Translating the Installer may sound a bit silly (after all, most
people will say that installing a Unix system is a job for system
administrators who will probably for long years still need to have
some knowledge in English), but I'm still and I will always be
convinced this is indeed one of the keys which may really open the
doors of a much wider localisation in the Debian Project.

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