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Zagreb reporting
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So here I am, in beautiful Zagreb of Croatia in a big circle of chairs where 40 people from more than 20 countries have come together for the Open Translation Tools Convergence event.
The idea behind the event is to bring together two groups of people: software developers working on tools for translation of open content and the content creators themselves. The goal? As the name implies, to converge translation methodologies and techniques, and document the needs and ideas for solutions.
The cool thing about it, besides that almost everyone you talk with is involved in localization one way or another, is that it’s more of a opinion exchange thing than a monologue-oriented one, more “ah-ha” than “listen to my opinion”. We’re all siting at a circle, everyone talking to everyone, participating, getting involved, getting excited. Good stuff.
I’m here for a variety of reasons. Meet localization experts and learn what other problems other localization projects have and what their goals are. Think of new ideas around translation like formats, workflow, content resources. Find out ways Transifex could help get resources translated that I haven’t thought about.
There are a huge number of resources needing translations, most of them using different methods for exporting strings and doing translation workflow. Transifex’s strength is that it blends well with existing methods of teams that use a version control system to host their translatable content. So, it makes all the sense in the world to study projects other than the traditional ones (think: PO files).
Take blogs for example. Many blogs might want their posts translated, and even some of them wouldn’ mind do their comments as well. Think of Django’s weblog or Red Hat Magazine: wouldn’t it be great if we had a tool taking their posts and allowing a community to translate them pronto? New post, interested translators get an email message with a link to an online translation form with the post paragraphs and a few minutes later voilà: you get your blog post translated in as many languages you have users for. Oh, and probably twice, or n times more, readers than with your current monolingual approach.
Thinking other use cases like wikis and web pages just blews your mind away.
One of the coolest things about these events is that it makes you really focus. You just can’t help coming up with crazy ideas. And of course, dream you had the time and people to make them a reality.
Really good stuff.
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μεσάνυχτα, Πέμπτη 29 Νοεμβρίου 2007
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