[am-translate] Quiet but still working

[Daniel Yacob]

Greetings All,

First I have to apologize for not sending any mail for this much time.
It is amazing I know, I can only apologize for it at this point.  While
silent I have been busy with localization activity, too busy to be able
too write about it.  Sorry this gets long, it is covering a lot of time.

During the summer I was fortunate to meet the developers of KiPot and
Pootle in person at a localization workshop where faculty of the Addis
Ababa University CS Department were also present.  Until that time I
didn't have a strong understanding of the roles of the two applications.
Now I understand them and am very reassured by the commitment of the
developers to the projects. Both are growing in usefulness and
reliability and the two may possibly merge into a single software some
time in the future.

The one lacking feature in both is for translation memory.  The Pootle
team is seeking funding now to be able to fill out this and other areas.
The translation software that was hosted under translate.amharic.org
attempted to solve the translation memory problem but the import/export
performance made it unusable (offline the latency problem didn't
manifest itself).  The translation software that was under t.a.o
was disabled some time ago, if it does return in the future it would
most certainly be Pootle or another such software that is actively
maintained by a community.  Fortunately the open translation software
has matured now where it makes more sense to work on an extension to
an existing software than build up one from scratch.

While mentioning it, I certainly wouldn't have time to work on extending
Pootle or KiPot for quite a while, but if anyone is interested in taking
on a small project, I could advise on some simple algorithms to make
Amharic word look-ups much more reliable.

Meanwhile...  If you haven't noticed, the AAU ICT department has
become involved in translation and has had a glossary web page up
for a few months:

  http://www.aau.edu.et/ictglossary/

If you've seen it before, check again and you'll find that in the last
week they've added the complete glossary available for download in a
single file. When I found out about the project I did try communicating
with the project manager but unsuccessfully.  You might have heard that
there was been a shake-up at AAU where the leader of the translation
project is no longer at the university, but continues to head the project
which is not effected.  Recently I did receive an inquiry from a team
member on the project and sent back the Fofi text that Alex had prepared
earlier along with the ISO data that was online some time ago.

I'll send a collection of PO file within the next 10 days, I encourage
readers here to do the same.  Once the project completes I'll consider
applying the vocabulary to the translations I did earlier.  I've been
out of translation this year except for Anaconda which is the Fedora
installer, also helping HiLCoE students with some translation of the
OOo Writer.  That is really a big, long term project, they intend to
go further with it semester by semester and non-students of course can
work with them.

So what happened to translate.amharic.org??  The previous software
running the site (Mambo) was dropped in favor of a more robust platform
(Plone) which should make running a family of sites (*.amharic.org) easier
and may inter-operate more readily with the python based translation
tools (like Pootle).  Right now the site is essentially empty but I
intend to migrate the applicable material from the old site and add
links to glossaries and useful resources, etc.

Perhaps the most useful the site can realistically be is to provide a
starting point and resource center for someone wishing to get started
on Amharic software translation.  For this, make sure that your projects
and contacts are on the site so people can find you.  If you have any
extra time and would like to work on the site as an editor, please let
me know and I will configure your access so that you can do so.  Note
the related sites (l10n., foss. ...), they are all in need of volunteers
to bring them to fruition.

Please do join the site and let me know of any problems that you
encounter.  There is no extra information available if you join but
you do get a user folder where can your own info, you can then write
to the Wiki, and membership is a starting point if you would like to
be an editor for individual sections.

cheers,

/Daniel