Re: Indonesian

[David Starner <starner@okstate.edu>]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 08:47:49AM +0700, arief muLya wrote:
> Is there any port to Indonesian Language in Debian's wolrd, yet?
> How can I help?

Support for a language is a range. If I'm not mistaken, Indonesian is
written in the Latin script and can be written using the English
alphabet and the following characters:

ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ
(aka Latin-1).

Right? If so, then you're lucky - Debian's programs will work for you
without problems, unlike Arabic, Hebrew or (sometimes) Japanese
speakers. If you're running Woody or Sid, you need to add id_ID to
/etc/locale.gen - there's a Debconf interface in the recent versions of
locales. (If you're running Potato, I'd recommend switch to Woody or Sid
if you plan to do much localization.) 

The main problem left is translation. You might want to check out
http://i18n.linux.or.id for what's being worked on. If you want to help
with Debian specifically, find a Debian-native program that's not been
translated to Indonesian and translate it (most use po files - the site
I just give should details, albeit I can't read it.) Alternately, you
can translate the debconf templates - somebody else can explain that for
you.

In my uninformed opinion, I'd concentrate on end-user programs, like
Mozilla, KDE and Gnome. Trying to translate everything the sysadmin
needs to read to Indonesian is a hopeless task, while KDE can be
translated by a few (very dedicated) individual (Wolfram Diestel is the
only KDE translator for Esperanto, and Esperanto is one of the most
throughly translated languages for KDE applications (but not
documentation).) And getting KDE or Gnome translated can give an
end-user the appearance of an almost complete translation, whereas
you'd have to translate the whole system for the sysadmin to get that
impression.

-- 
David Starner - starner@okstate.edu, dvdeug/jabber.com (Jabber)
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
When the aliens come, when the deathrays hum, when the bombers bomb,
we'll still be freakin' friends. - "Freakin' Friends"