Weblog entry #5 for JulienV
See all weblog entries made by JulienV.
Hi,
debian-administration is becoming very popular, more and more people read - like me - carfeully all newly published articles.
I know that Steve wants to encourage article submissions, and I was thinking that people could simply submit their articles in their native language. These articles could then be translated, and reviewed by native English speakers before being published on the website.
Most people can read English, but writing in English might be a barrier, preventing them to share their knowledge on this site.
Another way to increase the number of visitors would be to allow articles to be translated to different languages (I know this is already the case for some articles, as you can read witin the comments).
Both ideas would of course be worth only if enough people can do the translations and review them before publishing.
What do you think of it?
Cheers,
Julien
Comments on this Entry
Being in South Africa with 11 official languages, I have participated to a limited extend in some multi-language IT projects (none Open Source unfortunately), but I am willing to give some input of the couple of lessons I have learned.
Too see what South African are doing in this field, have a look at http://www.translate.org.za/
Have a good one!
===============================================
=== http://4j.blogspot.com/ ===
=== http://sourceforge.net/projects/lampas/ ===
===============================================
Joh 3:36
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
[ Send Message | View Steve's Scratchpad | View Weblogs ]
This is an interesting idea, but I admit I'm reluctant to start writing supporting code until it is obvious that it will be used.
Too often in the past I've written code to handle user requests only to see it be completely unused. (e.g. linking to off-site stylesheets. Many requests, but not a single user).
For the moment it might be worth coordinating via weblog entries - since these already allow the author to edit them and comments to be posted for feedback.
I'm certainly happy to review submissions if an author is unsure of their English language skills (and I've made changes already to submissions that were worded in strane - but not incorrect - fashions).
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
It would be far less work if bad English submissions were able to be submitted for correction. We have a lot of English speakers on this site, perhaps they could all help correct the articles.
Maybe "bad English" articles could be tagged?
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
[ Send Message | View Steve's Scratchpad | View Weblogs ]
I think it is fair to say I do that already.
Many authors write perfect text and it gets posted as is.
Other people use strange expressions and I "normalise" them to the best of my ability. I try not to drop stilted/strange/non-ideomatic text, but I do admit it has happened - if I can't understand it well enough to correct it then I have little choice at the moment.
So .. yes .. submit "non perfect" English and if it is understandable it will get fixed up and posted.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]