Weblog entry #95 for Steve
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I received a couple of mails today from somebody interested in setting up a Debian-Administration-like website catering to the German language readers.
This strikes me as an interesting idea as I know there are a lot of "foreign" users of Debian for whom English is either a second language or an unknown language.
I'd love to have some foreign content here, but I'm not sure how to organise it. It does seem clear that translations of articles should be available and also original non-English text too - but how to organise that?
Interesting subject, as I'm well aware of other Debian and Linux sites focussing upon particular markets - such as the Portuguese and the Spanish (both of these regions seem to be big users of Debian GNU/Linux).
In other site news I revamped the Yawns code site and started work upon a Yawns Administration Manual - obviously work in progress.
If you're interested in how the site works behind the scenes this will give you some clues; of course reading the code will give you even more!
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In particular, SPIP was raised as a good model for handling translations/multilingual issues. Having never used SPIP myself (and finding it difficult to locate a demo of the translator's interface), i can't say for sure. But i thought i'd pass along the suggestion anyhow.
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And i know its language management is good.
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hi,
I'd be interested in adding l10n to d-a.org, as previously posted in my weblog.
My thoughts were in the other way, but your proposal would reach the same aim. I think the best way to organize would be to have separate websites (subdomains like fr.d-a.org?), with links from the original article to the translated articles and the other way round. Some pages should summarize the work required in translations for each supported languages (which article needs to be translated, who's working on it....)
If this structure is set up, I would be interested in maintaining French language translations.
Cheers,
Julien
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OK there are two approaches here then:
- Integrate Foreign Language into this site
Pros:
- All user account stay the same.
- All users stay in one place.
Cons:
- I have more work.
- Things like the site menus will need work.
- The site code will need significant changes.
It could be done. But whether I have time to do the code changes is a big limitting factor.
- Having External Sites With Foreign Content
Pros:
- Other people do the work, so my time isn't taken up.
- The target market can have all the site in their own language.
Cons:
- If a user wants to visit both sites they have unrelated/different user accounts.
- There is a smaller userbase (initially at least).
- Volunteers might not appreciate the amount of work taken to run such a site.
I think that is a fair summery from my initial thoughts - though I may well be missing things.
I thing the idea of having per-language layouts could work, but I'm not sure how much work would be involved in setting it up. I guess initially I'm thinking:
- Adding a "language" code to each article.
- Adding per-language RSS feeds.
- Allowing the visitor to limit their view to a particular language, or set of languages.
I'm not sure how anonymous/unregistered viewers would feel if they saw mixed languages - so it would make sense to limit non-logged in users to English on the front-page. But I guess they would see their default language on the per-domain basis.
I'll have to mull over a layout.
There is a much simpler approach which would be to say:
- /articles/123 == English
- /articles/123/ES == Spanish version of the same article.
- /articles/123/DE == German version of the same article.
That is simpler in the sense that people always have to click through to their language - and the feeds could stay the same. (Perhaps I could add a footer to each article for which there was a translation available).
The downside to this approach is that I do need to setup a system for users to submit translations - and potentially allow non-authors to offer corrections / tell me if the translation is utterly bogus.
This might be a good way to go though since the work seems significantly easier.
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Joel on Software set up a separate wiki for article translations. I think he has a system of at least 2 translators per language.
Still these are all articles originaly written in English and then translated. The articles are limited in size and frequency. If there are many articles that will be created here in other languages that noone takes the time to translate, then some of the knowledge will be lost. On the other hand, if the knowledge is there in a special language it will not be lost for thouse who speak that language. :) English is my second language of four.
Unfortunatly the discussion will be fragmented. Sometimes the solutions are in the comments, and the question in the article. I like the approach to have an edit time on the article so that the article can contain the information, but it is not all the time that the authors update the article. (see http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/374 )
Maybe someone that has experience with multilingual sites can comment ? It is an interesting topic, how to deal with this problem in the best way. Debian uses the file in the url to select language : http://www.debian.org/index.sv.html and I guess that is an Apache feature ?
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Yes the index.xx.html is an Apache thing. Sadly in this case it wouldn't work since this site is CGI-driven, rather than using HTML files.
You do bring up an interesting point though relating to article comments. I was assuming that comments would be shared between the English original and the foreign translation - but I'm not sure how that would work in practise.
I dont think it would make sense to allow comments to be translated - yet you are correct that often many important things are written there.
It just goes to show that this is a complex situation and there isn't a perfect solution.
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The CGI can get this preference from Apache, instead of letting Apache do all the work.
Therefore as you revisit each component you need only add "is a translation available in the browsers preferred language" check at the start of the code. As long as people whose language isn't fully handled don't mine getting English instead, but since that is what happens now for everything...
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True. I guess I was focussing upon the content negotiation which is just an implementation detail - rather than the effect.
The more I think about it the more I think offering alternative languages here is the way to go, barring any last minute technical issues.
There are downsides but it seems like a simple enough idea so I'm going to resurrect demo.debian-administration.org over the weekend and start hacking code to get an idea of the details involved.
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So I have to say, thanks, but no thanks. Trying to translate all the articles is a daunting task. In this global world information has to spread rapidly, and sysadmins use English for this task. Period. For starting users of debian there are already localized sites with all the necessary information to get you started. Once you get to the level of a sysadmin and you bump into problems, well, if you do not understand English, you have a problem.
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You might already be able to measure the demand for this:
If the articles have a liberal license (I couldn't find the license), and there was enough demand, then the translations would be available already.
On the other hand..
Is the readership wanting to read articles in their own language (and therefore willing to do the translation and maintenance work for this), or wanting to submit articles in their own language (in which case submission of poor English would be possible, with tidying up from contributors).
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-
A programmer is just a tool which converts coca cola into code.
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Just send me an e-mail :)
Cheers, Sebastian
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