On 2 oct. 06, at 21:08, Bruno Haible wrote:
I foresee a possible scenario for examplewhere someone in francophone Africa writes in French which will be the common language to use to translate into local languages. Not the bestchoice to get you translations in all the world's languages, perhaps, but the correct choice for their circumstances. I'm speaking quite hypothetical now, of course.Quite hypothetical, indeed. Africa is not yet connected to the programmer's net. I got a single mail from Africa in 14 years. (Not counting the massesof Nigeria connection spam :-))
Maybe you are not on the right lists. Making an estimate of localization needs based on the number of people who get in touch with you in English (or any other language you use) is certainly not a statistically proven method.
There is tremendous localization activity in African countries (not limited to South Africa) and other developer-poor areas. See Javier Sola's work in Cambodia. Of course, people who work on localization create pools of users and developers who do not need to communicate in English. Do you see a lot of Chinese developers on the net expressing themselves in English ? If you do are they not only the tip of an "iceberg" of Chinese only (or close) developers who do not feel the need to share with English only (or close) developers ?
Jean-Christophe Helary