[Webcom] Re: Translated web site content

[Arnulf Christl]

Hi German Local Chapter to-be,
maybe you are interested to follow this language/content/translation
discussion. Feel free to request for a translator role for the OSGeo CMS,
we are in need of competent people.

On Sat, February 24, 2007 00:56, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> On 23-Feb-07, at 9:59 AM, Jason Birch wrote:
>
>> Agreed.  Translation is a different role than content creation, and
>> all "pages" should be semantically equivalent regardless of the
>> language they are being presented in.

The problem being that the technical "role" translator cannot control
semantic content. Anybody who has translator permissions can produce any
kind of crap. The only way we can ensure consistency is to have
conspicuous peer review - just like Daniel did right now.

>> I don't mind these two roles being held by the same people if
>> that's been OK'd by WebCom or the "owner" of a particular section
>> of the site,

I am ignorant of any section "owner" (with or without quotes).

>> but new content or changes to the meaning of existing
>> pages need to follow our guidelines, and be communicated to the
>> translations group for synchronisation.

I am ignorant of a translations group but support this idea (if that was a
motion to form one I second it).

>> I disagree that there should be different content for different
>> languages.  These can be maintained in the local chapter areas.
>> Hmm.  It might make sense to have a link to the appropriate local
>> chapter on the main page (contradicting himself)
>
> Arnulf,
> Can you tell us why your translation of the home page is so different
> from our English one? i.e. http://www.osgeo.org/startseite

Hi,
the /startseite is a compilation of the first five slides of a German
language OSGeo presentation that I carry around and preach to anybody who
can't escape me in time. I put that on the front page because I did not
like the English language main page. Yes, yet another bad idea (c) by 7.
Please point me to the content development body so that it can approve
changes and send it over to the translation group. ((Heck, thats both me
yet again?!))

> If there are better ways to do our main page then perhaps we can roll
> the kinds of changes you made in Deutsch back into the English version.

Thank you for trusting in my good faith. I have done a fair amount of
translation and I always, always end up with different copies because I
cannot separate creating and translating. It is a waste of time to
translate something that is either bad or out of date or both. The English
main page imnsho is both bad and out of date. No offence meant but it is
not exaclty inviting, is it?

What I did is to actually describe in normal language what the core areas
of OSGeo are, starting off with the software, followed by education and
then public geodata (the links point to the corresponding Wiki pages). The
next paragraph describes what this portal is all about and what it will
offer in the future (don't ask me how I can know that).

The last section describes how one can become a member (Werden Sie
Mitglied =literally= Become You member). At this point I am waiting for
the miraculous membership application form and coordinate input dialog and
at that point I usually fall asleep and dream of the member WFS and WMS
map...

Before I did /startseite I had already translated
http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html into
http://www.osgeo.org/ueber_uns (über=about, uns=us) English to German 1:1.
Apart from looking ugly (no structure, just a square block of text) the
English text does not really say anything much. I do not like this one for
example:

"OSGeo is still a nascent organization and in the process of taking final
shape."

Sounds like we are not ready yet. When will we be? My connotation to
"final shape" is "six feet under".

"While the initial membership and Board of Directors has been formed, the
foundation's governance model is undergoing review and discussion."

Hopefully this will never change, constant review ensures good quality.

Anyway, I dutyfully translated all of this 1:1 into German, sometimes it
just takes a few more words to say the same thing in German as it is a
more technical and exacting language than English.

Then I added a paragraph that mentions the GAV e.V. which is developing
into the German language bridge head to OSGeo (Local Chapter to-be). As a
reminder: The FOSSGIS conference committee has transfered €10k to the GAV
e.V. (conference profits of past years) to be used for OSGeo related
activities in Germany. OSGeo "main" is never going to see this money but
it will be spent following OSGeo's mission. Has this sunk in at all? I am
not sure. I remember someone implying that we would try to do things
"against" OSGeo "main". Hmmm. OK, this is getting way too complicated for
one email and will have to be addressed by other committees.

Do you see what my problem is? I just want to translate one page and end
up discussing local chapters and OSGeo governance. I will probably have to
either stop to develop OSGeo or stop to translate content. But if we do
that we will never even get started to have multilingual content. One
reason why I was so adamant to activate the language buttons...

Back to this one:

>> Agreed.  Translation is a different role than content creation, and
>> all "pages" should be semantically equivalent regardless of the
>> language they are being presented in.

This is true and not true. Language is a lot more complex and difficult
than seems at first glance ((please bear with me sounding like a preacher
and just attribute it to my general lowly nature)). A similar problem
applies to Wikipedia, there is de. and en. and. so. on. - plus they have
Commons and Wikimedia and and and. Know about that? Have a look, maybe it
is inspiring:

http://wikimedia.org/
http://www.wikipedia.org/

from there go to the English and the German Wikipedia and so on.

In my understanding the OSGeo Foundation best matches:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

and this splits into:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Hauptseite
...

Last but not least there are violent differences in culture, legal and law
all round the world. We are very lucky to have such tight genetic bounds
between German, English and French - compared to Chinese or Egyptian they
are almost identical. Still lots of things simply do not translate, lets
take the very first term that stopped me short: "Foundation"

Look at the long list of translations there are:
http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=on&search=Foundation&relink=on

But not one of them is "eingetragener Verein" (e.V.) which would be the
German term that we would use to describe what OSGeo is:
http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=on&search=Verein&relink=on

Lots of fodder to chew on. All the same I am positive that all different
language versions should transport the same OSGeo mission and message.
Translators should not create deviating content until we have resolved a
process. At the same time I am eager to get other languages running and if
this means that they take over an outdated English version I really don't
care too much.

I was very reluctant to approve the formation of the OSGeo China Chapter
because they surely must have different content in some respect or else
they will just be turned off. Anybody following what happens to
http://zh.wikipedia.org/ every now and then will know what I mean.

Hope some of this makes sense.

Best regards,

-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.wheregroup.com