Re: Ping

[Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>]

Quoting Einar Jón (ejg@visir.is):
> Hi everybody.
> 
> The main reason for my reply is to cc: Kristgy's answer to 
> Cristian, as he implied that he's not on the list.
> 
> But I have to agree with Kristinn, when I have the choice 
> of Icelandic or English as an installation language, I 
> usually go for the english version because it is easier, 
> more consistent and contains fewer words that I don't 
> understand (the "new" words invented for this purpose can 
> be very stange indeed).
> 
> Most Icelandic kids have a firm grasp of the english 
> language from the age of 12 or so, so the number people 
> who would like to install debian but don't because of 
> language restrictions can probably be counted on your 
> fingers.
> 
> But this sounds interesting - not the translation as such 
> but other aspects of it, like choosing LANG=is_IS as 
> default and picking the Icelandic keyboard layout while 
> installing (chars like /\"*@;:()[] are in different places 
> so entering paths and using vim can be annoying).
> 
> Please let us know what needs to be done and how much can 
> be done...


I was expecting arguments such as "most Icelandic people speak
English" and "most geeks use English when installing Linux systems".

Indeed, I hear or read these each time I'm speaking about i18n in free
software and, well, I read them most of the time when talking with
people from so-called northern countries. Probably because, as you
write, English language skills are very well developed in your
respective countries which is of course not a shame..:-)

Though not strictly speaking false arguments, I think that such
reasoning misses one key point : working towards making our favorite
operating system environment more spread out and conquering new
territories...

As an example, I would for instance mention the Skolelinux project,
probably because it may ring bells for people in Iceland, being a
project originated in another "small" country with the majority of the
population having good English skills. This project is lead by Petter
Reinholdtsen, who I've CC'ed to this mail....

 (sorry, Petter, for writing that NO is a "small" country....but I
think you get the point and you know I have no bad intention there..:-))

Skolelinux, for those who aren't aware of it, is a project for
deployment of Linux-based teaching environments in norwegian
schools. As is, having a full support of norwegian languages is a must
have, of course. So, most of the norwegian translations in Debian come
from Skolelinux, for instance. More funnily, they have two official
different norwegian languages and thus we have both translations..:-)
They're even working for getting localisation in Northern Sami, which
is spoken by about a few dozen thousands people in Norway....

So, as you may see, there is for sure probably no direct interest in
having Icelandic translations. However, this would certainly be a very good
positive sign and yet another argument for Debian being a universal
Operating System.

After all, Microsoft Windows *is* translated to is, isn't it? :-))

I hope I have given you guys and girls enough arguments for
considering working on IS translations and localisation (as you
mentioned, localisation involves other parts).

For working on D-I l10n in a new language, you should have a look at 

http://svn.debian.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/d-i/trunk/installer/doc/i18n/i18n.html

This long document explains how the l10n work is organised and gives
the steps towards a new l10n being included in Debian Installer.

This is not really hard work and can be handled by 1 or 2 people....as
well, this could give your "local" l10n mailing list some good
starting push and help building a new l10n "team" in Debian.

Please keep me CC'ed to your answers. Keeping Petter CC'ed should
probably be done on his request.