Ubuntu Translations Interviews: Daniel Nylander (Swedish Translation Team)

By David Planella | Published: 2011-01-11

Daniel NylanderUbuntu is brought to users in their own language by a large community of dedicated volunteer translators, who tirelessly work on localizing every part of the Operating System release after release.

In this series of interviews we’ll get to know who they are, about their language and how they work.

This week we’re introducing you to Daniel Nylander, the Swedish translation team coordinator.

Daniel Nylander on Swedish translations

Could you tell us a bit about you and the language you help translate Ubuntu into?

I’m 36 year old and live in the capitol of Sweden, Stockholm.

I fill up the weekdays as a Systems Engineer for Blue Coat Systems, Inc. The evenings and weekends are mainly dedicated for translation work.

I’ve been the main contact for the Swedish Ubuntu Translation Team for a couple of years now. My other commitments are being the main translator for GNOME, GIMP, Debian, Xfce, LXDE, VLC, VirtualBox etc. Nowadays, I try to focus on a smaller number of projects than before.

Swedish is a very difficult language, both verbally and in writing. The Swedish alphabet consists of 29 letters (A-Z, Å, Ä and Ö). Verbally it sounds just like the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show.

From the Wikipedia entry: Swedish (svenska) is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is, to a considerable extent, mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is currently the largest of the North Germanic languages by numbers of speakers.

How and when did you become an Ubuntu translator?

Personally, I started my translation efforts around 2005. Doing some minor translations for various Debian projects evolved into being the main translator for the GNOME Project. From there on, I saw what Ubuntu had become and started to coordinate the translation efforts in Launchpad.

What other projects do you help with inside the community?

I translate pretty much everything I can get hold on. What I focus on is basically what is to be released next. At the moment, my focus is on the next major GNOME release (which will be in Ubuntu 11.04).

Do you belong to an Ubuntu LoCo team? If so, which one?

I have been involved in the Swedish Ubuntu LoCo but the focus is nowadays on the translation effort. I do however help out in the Swedish translation forum on a daily basis.

How can people who want to help with translating Ubuntu and all the various pieces and parts into your language get started?

We have a comprehensive wiki page for new translators. My best advice for new translators is to start from the basics. For instance, translating simple wiki pages or documentation is a good start.

What’s the desktop experience for Ubuntu users in your language? Is Ubuntu in your language popular among native speakers?

Yes, I would say that more than 50% of the Ubuntu users in Sweden do use Swedish in Ubuntu. I got a few thank you emails from senior citizens who wanted to express their thanks for being able to use a computer (in their native language).

Where does your team need help?

We try to do as much of the translation work upstream. This means that the major part of the work is already done when it hits Ubuntu. The Swedish Ubuntu Translation Team is by design a very small team. It’s basically me and Håkan Hagman who manage it all. However, everyone is welcome to submit translation suggestions which we then could verify and commit.

Do you know of any projects or organizations where Ubuntu is used in your language?

There are a number of smaller projects within schools and government that uses Ubuntu in Swedish. We are not aware of any larger projects (feel free to inform me if any).

What do you feel is the most rewarding part of translating Ubuntu?

The reward is feeling you are part of something and that you contribute with something that people with less or no experience (language barrier) or disabilities (accessibility) can use a computer in their own native language. Children nowadays learn English very early in school and sadly also a negative trend when it comes to reading and especially writing the Swedish language correctly.

Is there anything else about your team or translation efforts that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to talk about?

We could never have done what we have done if it weren’t for the great translation team coordination from David.

Become an Ubuntu Translator

Do you speak languages? Join the our translation community and make Ubuntu accessible to everyone in their own language!

Find a translation team for your language: Join a translations teamHelp translating in your language:Translate Ubuntu!

Edubuntu Council Updates

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-01-04

As voted by the Edubuntu Members, Marc Gariépy joins the Edubuntu Council to serve for the next term of 2 years.

Jordan Ericksson and Richard Johnson has stepped down from the Council due to other commitments. We thank them for their role in Edubuntu so far and hope that they will continue to be involved on other levels.

In lieu of the change in number of members in the Council (down to 5 members from 6), the quorum have been updated to be 3 members from 4.

We welcome Marc to the Council and hope that he’ll have lots of fun working on improving the Edubuntu community.

To everyone else, have a great 2011!

Originally sent to the edubuntu-devel mailing list by Jonathan Carter on Tue Jan 4 21:44:05 UTC 2011

Translations Stories: Year 2010 in review for the Slovenian translation team

By David Planella | Published: 2011-01-04
We’d like to show how translations change people’s lives for the best, and how the work of translators has an impact on that. We’d like to share our excitement and highlight the awesome work translators do. As such, we’re pleased to start off this series of translations stories with this excellent article from the Slovenian translation team, originally published here.

New year is great time to look in the past, reflect upon the work done, see what’s been done, congratulate oneself for that, make plans and bravely start a new year.
We are sharing this with all of you because:
  • We are deeply proud on our achievements
  • We would like to get comments from other teams as well (how did you experience 2010 – share it on your blog or in the comments)
As mentioned before year 2010 was really amazingly awesome for Slovenian translation team!
Detailed description below is mostly talking about work done in launchpad and gnome translation project as those are the most important for ubuntu distribution:
  • We finished the translation of gnome-extra section. We were actively maintaining the translations throughout 2010 so you were able to some something like the image below for most of 2010:
  • We also managed to finish most of the GUI translations. We are still missing a bit of gnome-office and external dependencies. We hope to complete it fully in 2011.
  • Together with other translation groups we have managed to accept first version of word list, which contained about 300 terms. It’s been constantly updating and growing throughout the year. Current version contains close to 900 terms.
  • After the first version of word list, which solved some terminology disagreements we reviewed all (285 .po files in total) translated gnome packages and removed a mountain of inconsistencies, which have lingered around since the beginning of translation effort around the year 2000.
  • In a similar way we have reviewed important non-gnome packages in uubuntu. As a result Ubuntu 10.10 is by far the most terminologically consistent release so far.
  • Updated and improved translations were (sometimes with a lot of effort) sent back to upstream (translation project, pulseaudio, debian). This means translations will be available to other distributions and operating systems as well.
  • To improve translation quality we have split into translation and reviewer group.
  • We have rearranged our wiki page and moved it to lugos (Linux User Groups Of Slovenia) website.
  • We wrote the guides for poedit and lokalize.
  • Established our own chatroom.
  • We started writing this blog 🙂
  • We have been actively searching for new translators. Number of moderately active translators  (karma above 500) has increased from 6 (August 2010) to 17 (December 2010).
  • Total karma has jumped from 30 000 (August 2010) to 48 500 (December 2010).
  • This enabled us to translate a lot of new packages and increase translation level of default GUI in  Ubuntu from 84 % in 10.04 to 99 % v 10.10. This just placed us withing top 10 languages worldwide  (Slovenian is 178. language in the world by the number of native speakers).
  • Translated some 30 smaller programs in launchpad, such as ubuntu tweak, awn, supertuxkart chromium browser, etc.
  • Translated GCompris, an educational suite for kids (including with more than 100 sound instructions).
  • Started regular montly meetings in the chatroom (online)
  • Started drinking tasty cool translators beer monthly 🙂 (if my phone’s flash wouldn’t be horrible, I could show you a nice photo here 🙁 )
  • With Firefox plugin EH-Tip created a tool, which enables us easy integration of or word list into launchpad. Several other teams have expressed interest to implement it into their workflow too.
  • Had an awesome time doing it 🙂
  • KDE translation team has also been active and in 2010 managed to maintain the translations and add about 7000 newly translated string.
  • Growth in 2010 for Slovenian Gnome and KDE translation proejct is shown on the graph below  (y axies is the number of total translated strings – application and documentation):

However we still left some nice challanges for 2011 :). So if you want to help us out and make 2011 equally or even more awesome than 2010 head on our blog and read all the details about joining (contact page).

Happy and successful 2011 to everyone!

Send your translations story!Do you have an interesting translation story to tell? Send us your article and help supporting and promoting the awesome work your translation team is doing

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 218

By nhandler | Published: 2011-01-03

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter

This is Issue #218 for the month of December 2010 and is available in full here.

In this issue we cover:

This issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Amber Graner
  • Nathan Handler
  • Liraz Siri
  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • John Chiazzese
  • Daniel Lewis
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License.

Ubuntu Translations Interviews: André Gondim (Brazilian Portuguese Translation Team)

By Joeb454 | Published: 2010-12-16

Ubuntu is brought to users in their own language by a large community of dedicated volunteer translators, who tirelessly work on localizing every part of the Operating System release after release.

In this series of interviews we’ll get to know who they are, about their language and how they work.

This week we’re introducing you to André Gondim, the Brazilian Portuguese translation team coordinator.

André Gondim on Ubuntu Brazilian Portuguese translations

Could you tell us a bit about you and the language you help translate Ubuntu into?
My name is André Gondim, I am 28 years old. My language is derived from Portugal‘s Portuguese, but of course we have our peculiarities. In Brazil we’re around 190 million people, from which roughly 12% can understand English.

How and when did you become an Ubuntu translator?
I started with Ubuntu in about 2005. I met Og Maciel and he told me how I could help with Ubuntu even if I wasn’t a programmer: localization was a good way to start. Since then I help with translations, but started regularly in about 2007. That time I started working hard in translations and entered in the top translations’ contributors. In 2009 I became a translator coordinator in Brazil.

What other projects do you help with inside the community?
When I have time, I try to translate some packages directly in GNOME.

Do you belong to an Ubuntu LoCo team? If so, which one?
I am a member of the Brazilian Council and I belong to a sub-LoCo, the Rio Grande do Sul state in Brazil, whenever I can, I try to organize events here and motivate our other Sub-LoCo teams to organize release parties, Software Freedom Days, FLISOLs, and other events like install-fests.

How can people who want to help with translating Ubuntu and all the various pieces and parts into your language get started?
Well, If someone wants to help may read the wiki, or visit the Launchpad Brazilian Translators‘ team in Launchpad.

What’s the desktop experience for Ubuntu users in your language? Is Ubuntu in your language popular among native speakers?
We’re always very careful to review all translations to pt_BR, so the error rate is very low. This, I believe, contributes greatly to have an Ubuntu very well translated to our mother tongue. As the Hungarian translators’ coordinator mentioned Hungarian users said, I guess we could say here too: “Ubuntu speaks Brazilian Portuguese very well.”. If I am not wrong, Ubuntu is the most used linux distribution in Brazil and I daresay that a huge part of these users are using it in our language. The users I see aren’t using it in pt_BR are developers and such.

Where does your team need help?
Help is always welcome, in every field. We are always inviting people to help, because there are plenty of strings to be translated and reviewed, every release. If one wants to help, Documentation and Translation itself are two good ways to do that.

Do you know of any projects or organizations where Ubuntu is used in your language?
I know Ubuntu is used in some colleges, also in some “tele-centros” (places where you can use the computer for free to surf on the Internet, to write documents and other stuff).

What do you feel is the most rewarding part of translating Ubuntu?
When someone tells me “if Ubuntu was available only in English, I wouldn’t be able to use it.”. I feel really rewarded.

Is there anything else about your team or translation efforts that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to talk about?
I would like to thank all the translations’ team for all work done ever, specially this cycle. This cycle we’ll release Ubuntu with less than 10% remaining strings to translate. Our goal is to reach 0%, of course, but every cycle we’re getting better and better at doing this. That’s why I am so proud of my team.

Become an Ubuntu Translator

Do you speak languages? Join the our translation community and make Ubuntu accessible to everyone in their own language!

Find a translation team for your language: Join a translations teamHelp translating in your language:Translate Ubuntu!