Archive for the ‘Localization’ Category

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A FUEL for Gujarati Localization!

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Localization of Open Source Software into Gujarati language was started more than five years ago. Number of people joined the Gujarati localization efforts and many left. Every release of open source distributions like Fedora, Debian, OpenSuse got better localization into Gujarati. Despite continuous efforts by individuals or groups in Gujarati Localization there was no real 100% acceptance of many translations. Even today there is no 100% satisfaction in the Gujarati end users’ group for localized Gujarati distributions.

Similar issue has been faced by other (Indic) languages as well. FUEL (Frequently Used Entries for Localization) project was started by Mr. Rajesh Ranjan from Red Hat as a part of the community contribution to overcome the above mentioned issue. FUEL project is a community project initiated by Red Hat. It is hosted on fedorahosted.org. FUEL tries to provide a standardized and consistent computer interface for users. FUEL evaluation has been successfully completed for Hindi, Maithili, Marathi and Tamil languages before Gujarati. More information regarding FUEL can be found here: https://fedorahosted.org/fuel/

FUEL Evaluation workshop for Gujarati was organized on 26th – 27th December, 2009 in Ahmedabad @ Infineon Infotech Pvt. Ltd. office, where participants from Gujarati Localization group and Linguists from Ahmedabad have taken part. Participants were:

* Mr. Siddharath Bhatt (Linguist)
* Mr. Prashant Dave (Linguist)
* Mr. Yogendra Vyas (Linguist)
* Mr. Ketan Upadhyay (Department of Languages in Gujarat Govt.)
* Ms. Maitri Shah (Infineon Infotech Pvt. Ltd.)
* Ms. Shruti Amin (Infineon Infotech Pvt. Ltd.)
* Ms. Sweta Kothari (Red Hat Inc.)
* Mr. Ankit Patel (Red Hat Inc.)
* Ms. Deval Vyas (Infineon Infotech Pvt. Ltd.)
* Ms. Padma Jadav (Infineon Infotech Pvt. Ltd.)
* Ms. Sumaiya Vohra (Infineon Infotech Pvt. Ltd.)

First day, 26th December, started around 10:15 AM with a round of introduction and then I provided a generic idea about the FUEL, since it was a new thing for many of the participants. By 11 AM we were ready to start the evaluation of Gujarati translation of FUEL entries. Sweta and Maitri began to take us through FUEL entries. Initially it used to take lot of time for each FUEL entry, since the terms are based on computer terminology and it’s difficult for us to explain them practically each and every word, as language experts were not really used to computers. In the first two hours we did complete not more than 15 fuel entries, while our goal was to complete all 578 entries of FUEL within two days. Mr. Ketan Upadhyay has played a major role there to explain things in a better way that experts understand. We all were really amazed by suggestions from Mr. Prashant Dave and Mr. Siddharth Bhatt when they started bringing new better translation words and explained us some grammatical rules to remember while translating from English. We were taking reference of Saarth Dictionary and Mr. Ratilal Chandaria’s website GujaratiLexicon.com for clarifying some doubts. By 6 PM we were done with evaluation of 248 entries. But we knew that it’s going to be faster next day, since the rhythm of evaluation has already come in and everybody was on the same track.

Next day Mr. Yogendra Vyas, who is another great linguist, joined us for the evaluation. It has become an easy and quick next day since we had already gone through single word translation evaluation and now it’s time to complete two words and three words translation evaluation, where majority of the single words were common. So, we just needed to pick-up the translations from earlier evaluated words. Moreover, Mr. I Felix, who is the member of the FUEL upstream project provided contextual information for each FUEL entry. That has made our job little easy. End of the day, we were done with evaluation of all 578 entries of FUEL.

During the event, we realized that there were some words which are not really commonly used, but difficult for the end users to understand. So, FUEL entries has to be revised as well in my opinion. Another thing we noticed that, some words in English itself are improper at their usage location, which needs to be addressed and resolved. Standardization towards English words is necessary.

At last we discussed the strategy to implement the evaluated translations into the existing work. Under the wonderful co-ordination from Ms. Maitri Shah has helped us to complete the event successfully on schedule.

FUEL evaluated translations for Gujarati is available from fuel-gujarati page: https://fedorahosted.org/fuel/wiki/fuel-gujarati

In simple words, it was a great event for Gujarati Localization community and evaluated translations going to play an important role for future localization activities. Hats of to all who participated in the event and spend their precious time and efforts to make Gujarati Localization better through FUEL evaluation workshop!

Some snaps of the event:
Infineon Infotech Pvt. Ltd
Mr. Prashant Dave
Mr. Siddharth Bhatt and Mr. Ketan Upadhyay
FUEL Gujarati participants
FUEL Gujarati participants

/Ankit

Posted in Gujarati, Localization | No Comments »

Towards standardization…

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Till date, we have seen many efforts towards standardizations of translations, like Glossaries, Dictionaries, FUEL, etc. across Open Source projects and language communities. However, one question always come to my mind why translations are not yet standardized even though these many efforts are already in place!

Tried to figure out the possible reasons, like

  • not all languages have efforts being made in the direction of standardization
  • not all languages have glossaries, dictionaries, fuel, etc.
  • not all translators follow standard terms of translations being used in Glossaries, Dictionaries, FUEL, etc
  • not all translators use terminology management tools
  • not all translators spend time standardizing translations

it could be any of the above. But there is another important issue I just realized that we have different group of translators working for almost every different open source project for this matter.

Fedora: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Teams
Debian: http://lists.debian.org/i18n.html
OpenSuse: http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Localization_Teams
Gnome: http://l10n.gnome.org/teams/
KDE: http://i18n.kde.org/teams-list.php
XFCE: http://i18n.xfce.org/wiki/language_maintainers
Mozilla: https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Teams
Openoffice: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Languages
Robot Project (for various other important open source applications): http://translationproject.org/team/
Pidgin: http://developer.pidgin.im/l10n/

and many more…

So, one of the major problems I see towards standardization of translations is: there are more than one translation community per language, which leads to different standards being followed in various open source projects. As a result, there is no standard translation terminology across (and within) open source distributions. This issue is obvious for closed source projects as well, but could be resolved for Open Source projects at least by,

  • integration of language communities of each language
  • working together collaboratively
  • following same standard, even if language communities decide to run separate

Not sure, how is it going to be possible to implement any of the above, but there should be some way to fix this issue.

Thanks!
Ankit

Posted in Localization | 2 Comments »

Growth of Indic Localization for Firefox

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

In late 2004, Firefox localization work started for two of the Indic languages (Gujarati and Punjabi) and respective language communities managed to get both of the languages included with Firefox 1.x release by 2005. Look at the status of the Indic languages for Firefox today… 11 Indic languages! It’s amazing! Three cheers for all localization contributors as well as good support from the Mozilla and Mozilla l10n team.

Firefox Version 3.5 3.0.x 2.x 1.x
Indic Languages Assamese

Bengali (India) Bengali (India)

Gujarati Gujarati Gujarati Gujarati

Hindi Hindi

Kannada Kannada

Malayalam

Marathi Marathi

Oriya

Punjabi Punjabi Punjabi Punjabi

Tamil

Telugu Telugu
Total Indic Languages 11 7 2 2
Total Languages 70+ 60+ 40+ 30+

Download the latest version of Firefox 3.5 and provide your feedback to the Mozilla and L10n development communities to make your web experience better and better with Firefox.

Firefox downloads: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

Cheers,
Ankit

Posted in Firefox, Localization | 2 Comments »

Gujarati locale and standards…

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Few years before I have got a chance to modify the Gujarati locale file, which was initially created by Karunakar. Since the locale file plays a very important role in computer localization for any language, it was really important task for me. So, I had to make sure that any kind of change I make to this file is very accurate. After taking reference from Dictionaries I had entered the appropriate entries in the locale file.

Since last couple of days, there has been a discussion happening on Indlinux-group mailing list for issues posted against Gujarati locale. Issues were basically posted by French guy called Bernard, who can speak fluent Hindi and can read Gujarati to some extent. I felt really good when I saw the initial posting, since I found someone apart from the existing localization contributors, interested in Gujarati localization.

The major issues highlighted in the discussions were:
1. Rupee symbol in Gujarati locale
=> According to Bernard and few others as well, Rupee symbol should be “રૂ” rather than “રુ” or “૱”.
=> I have done my secondary, higher secondary education in pure Gujarati medium and used or seen “૱” only.
=> Unicode chart also points to the rupee symbol for Gujarati as “૱” (U+0AF1)
=> have taken a reference from SSC (10th) Maths Question Book from Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board website: http://www.gseb.org/gseb/download/student/question-bank/gujarati-medium/std-10/Maths.pdf – Page no. 12, 13. Maths_PDF.p65
2. Translation of Thursday into Gujarati
=> Thursday translates to “ગુરુવાર” in Gujarati. But here the spelling should be “ગુરૂવાર” according to Bernard.
=> There is no fault from Bernard’s side since the calendar that he sees at home displays “ગુરૂવાર”.
=> In fact when I was editing the Gujarati locale file initially, I also assumed that the spelling should be “ગુરૂવાર”. But I had to refer to the standards, dictionaries, etc. and I realized that the correct spelling is “ગુરુવાર”.

Last weekend I got a chance to visit my hometown Bilimora. While reading newspaper (Gujarat Samachar), I have noticed they have also been using wrong symbol for Rupee (રૂ|.) and Thursday ( ગુરૂવાર ). Same wrong spelling for Thursday I found in a calendar at my house from Gujarat Samachar. You can see that here:

Wrong_Calendar

There was another calendar in my bedroom :)

Correct_Calendar

So, I think the print media has been using wrong spellings for some words, which creates a confusion among users and they tend to use wrong words which they have been seeing often.

I am not a Gujarati linguist, but I have done my school study from Gujarati medium and know Gujarati upto well extent. I have modified the locale file according to the definitions provided in the Dictionaries and standards. However, this discussion needs an authentic verification from a language expert.

Thank you for reading!
Ankit

Posted in Gujarati, Localization | 2 Comments »

My experience of localizing Firefox & Thunderbird!

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Firefox, world’s most popular, faster and secure web browser. It provides you lot of flexibility to customize your browser as you wish. Would you not like to get such a wonderful web browser Localized into your native language? I am sure, you would.

As I told in my previous blog post, I never got a chance to work on Mozilla Localization Project (MLP) before joining Red Hat, because we didn’t have enough time to work on it. But I was really eager to do it. Situation remained same till couple of months after joining Red Hat too, as I have entered into a Multi National Company now, which I have never expected and I had to learn many new things – How the processes in MNCs work, style of working in a world’s leading Open Source company, company culture, plus some internal tasks, etc. And of course, the main task was to localize Fedora into Gujarati, which I have never worked before too. So, it took me couple of months to actually plan and start the Localization of Firefox and Thunderbird into Gujarati (gu-IN).

Before I actually plan and start working on Firefox/Thunderbird Localization, the task has already been taken up by my native language community (Utkarsh) members. In the early December 2004, I heard that Mozilla has been localized by Utkarsh team into Gujarati (gu-IN) and released on 25th November. Before that, I wasn’t aware about the fact that Utkarsh team has actually started working on Mozilla Localization. The problem was from my side only. I never tried to keep myself in sync with Utkarsh team after I left Magnet. Then only, I realized that, How am I supposed to work in Open Source and with Open Source community. I talked with my friends over there in Utkarsh group and discussed future plans for Localization of various other Open Source projects. By then, they have already started working on Firefox Localization, which was an easy task for them, as they were already familiar with the Mozilla Localization process, which is quite similar to Firefox Localization. So, I have taken charge for Thunderbird Localization.

January 05, 2005, Utkarsh released Firefox 1.0 Localization on Utkarsh website and incorporated it into Gujarati Live CD – “Utkarsh”. I released Thunderbird 1.0.6 into Gujarati on IndianOSS on January 06, 2005. But, the thing is, language packs released for Firefox/Thunderbird on IndiaOSS/Utkarsh is not considered as official release of Mozilla, because it’s not tested and verified/approved by Mozilla. So, the next challenge for us was, to get Gujarati Firefox and Thunderbird tested and verified by Mozilla and get it included into upstream Mozilla. To all localizers, here, I would like to pass one important message:

Please don’t stop working on Localization of any open source project, until you get it released upstream! Otherwise, the whole world (may be, except Localizers) will not get the benefits out of your extraordinary efforts! Because world is actually aware about upstream projects only, but may not be aware about your language community website. So, for any Open Source Localization, may be run process within your community, but target upstream!

Back to the topic! :)  Getting Mozilla language pack upstream is not an easy task. :o  It’s not just that you completed the translation, means your language will get a place on Mozilla upstream. You need to be very accurate, complete the translation 100% (error-free) and follow the standard Mozilla Localization process strictly. If you miss anything out of these, your language will not get included on the Mozilla upstream! It took me lot of time to understand the process completely, even though it’s well-defined. Because it’s quite complex for the localizers like me, who used to follow the simple and easy process for any other major Open Source Projects for doing the Localization! Almost same time Amanpreet Singh Aalam, a co-ordinator of Punjabi Localization community – Punlinux – and I have started localizing the Firefox and Thunderbird. So, we used to communicate with Axel Hecht (nick: Pike), who is the Localization Lead for Firefox, Pascal, and many others from Mozilla team to help us getting our languages included upstream Mozilla. Axel has really made our life easy, while we were trying to figure out the process.

The process of Firefox/Thunderbird Localization involves four major steps:
1. Build/Join the team
2. Understand and follow the Localization process workflow
3. Build language packs
4. Get the language packs and/or translations included upstream.
I have tried to describe all of these steps in detail on this URL: Firefox/Thunderbird Localization Process , where I have put all URLs of official Mozilla Localization process. There are quite a few technical challenges as well, which we might talk later in other blog posts…

Even though we understood the process and followed it very well, kept Axel in loop all the time, it took around six months of time for us to get our languages actually released on Mozilla upstream for Firefox and Thunderbird both. Finally, Gujarati was available on Mozilla downloads urls (Firefox, Thunderbird) with release 1.5. That was really an achievement! Since then, I am continuously updating Firefox and Thunderbird Localization into Gujarati. And now it’s time to see Firefox 3 with Gujarati soon… Beta! and RC!

One thing, I would like to tell to upcoming Mozilla localizers that, “Once your language is released on upstream Mozilla, process of Mozilla Localization becomes easy compared to earlier! You just need to maintain the translations at the time of each release and resolve technical issues, if any issue comes.”

In 2007, July 13-15, I got an opportunity to present a talk and conduct the workshop on Localization in an event called “National Conference on Open Source“, organized in Ahmedabad (India), which is the largest city in the state of Gujarat. There I met Christofer Hoffman, the director of engineering of the Mozilla Foundation and Seth Bindernagel, who works on Mozilla’s evangelism team. We couldn’t spend much time on discussing the Mozilla and Localization, as both Chris and Seth has to catch the flight. But, we had a separate event for Mozilla in Mumbai (India) few days after this conference. The event “Join Hands with Firefox“, was organized by Nirav, where I have been invited to discuss about our future plans on Localization of Mozilla. To read about the event, read Seth’s blog. After this meet, we formed a group for Mozilla India Localization contributors, where we gathered all contributors from India, and discussed India specific things in Mozilla Development. You can find recent discussions here.

So, that’s all about my experience localizing Firefox and Thunderbird till date!

Posted in Firefox, Localization | 4 Comments »

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