LOCALISATION
(L10N)
A piece of cake that is not only a piece of cake.
DrRider

LOCALISATION
WHAT IS IT?

WHAT IS IT?
TRANSLATION

LOCALISATION ­ WHY?
●
Open Source Project
– Contribution from people around the world
– Distributed to people around the world
– Not all people can use English well
– Give them more accessibility to softwares and technology

Examples
●
GNOME
●
KDE
●
Many Open Source Projects

LOCALISATION ­ WHAT?
●
APPLICATIONS
– User Interface
– Error Messages
– Info Messages
●
DOCUMENTATION
– Manuals
– Help Documents

LOCALISATION ­ HOW?
●
Translate messages, documents, etc
●
Contribute to upstream
●
Roles of Contributors
– As translators
– As Co­ordinator

LOCALISATION ­ HOW?
●
Translator – preferred characteristics
– Have a good command in both languages
– Familiar with the program that is being translated
– Familiar with computer jargons
– Have a good skill in writing

LOCALISATION ­ HOW?
●
Co­ordinator – preferred characteristics
– Translator's features
– High responsibility
– Can co­ordinate between translators as well as people from
upstream
– Good communication skills

LOCALISATION ­ HOW?
●
Co­ordinators
– GNOME Project
●
Theppitak Karoonboonyanan
●
http://thep.blogspot.com
●
http://linux.thai.net
– KDE Project
●
Sahachart Anukulkitch
●
drrider[at]gmail.com

LOCALISATION
●
Why is it not a piece of cake?
– Numerous string entries
– A huge number of packages
– Low number of translators
– Need some specific knowledges in order to effectively translate
programs
– Need higher­than­average communication skills, especially in
writing, to make the translated strings understandable.
– etc....

LOCALISATION ­ HOWTO
●
Choose a program that you would like to translate
●
Tell your co­ordinator
●
Download the message's template (*.pot file)
●
Translate... and save as *.po file
●
When finish, send the file to co­ordinator
●
Co­ordinator will check translation and if things go well,
the file will be uploaded to upstream

LOCALISATION ­ HOWTO
●
Tools
– SVN/CVS (http://subversion.tigris.org/)
●
A version control software, used to download template files
●
For co­ordinator, this program will also be used to upload files to
repository
– KBabel (http://kbabel.kde.org/)
●
A tool that is used to edit and manage gettext PO files

Entries
Original
string
Translated
string

LOCALISATION ­ RESOURCES
●
Theppitak's Blog http://thep.blogspot.com
●
Glossary for OSS
http://www.opentle.org/ossglossary/index.php
●
ศัพท์บัญญัตราชบัณฑิตยสถาน
ิ
http://rirs3.royin.go.th/coinages/webcoinage.php
●
Thai GNOME Translation Team http://gnome­
th.sourceforge.net/

LOCALISATION ­ RESOURCES
●
KDE Thai Team
http://l10n.kde.org/team­infos.php?teamcode=th

LOCALISATION – FAQ