MozCamp Berlin 2011, part 2

Except the general topic of Loving the Web, there was another important topic present in almost every time slot of MozCamp Berlin 2011, a topic that interest me more than anything else in software: localization. I attended most of the localization talks and gave one myself.

MozCamp Berlin 2011 WorldReady

• Vito Smolej from Slovenia gave two important talks about Translation Memory, especially in OmegaT. Translation Memory is barely used in Mozilla localization projects, even though it could make things much more efficient and Vito showed some ways in which it could be employed.
• Jean-Bernard Marcon from France talked about the state of the BabelZilla site, which is used to translate Mozilla add-ons. Gladly, i didn’t have to tell him that despite the impressive amount of localizations that are done at that site, it is very problematic because of numerous technical issues – he said himself that he’s well aware of them and is going to replace the software completely Real Soon Now. I found it a little strange, however, that Jean-Bernard is happy about using the site for translating only Mozilla add-ons and doesn’t want to extend it to any other projects – say, Firefox itself. Oh well, as long as he maintains the add-ons site well, i’m happy.
• Chris Hofmann and Jeff Beatty gave a great presentation about the present and the future of organizing localization groups and communicating about it. Frankly, it’s not all that i hoped to hear, but i’m really happy just to know that Mozilla, like Wikimedia, now has a guy whose job is to communicate about localization.

And i gave a talk that compares the localization of Mozilla and MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia. The slides are here. Many people who attended it said that it was bold of me to say these rather negative things about Mozilla. It is somewhat true – it is quite bold of me to use the first major Mozilla event i attend as a bully pulpit to promote my other project, but the talk was generally well-received. I believe that i succeeded at making my point: Both Mozilla and MediaWiki are leaders in the world of massively localized Free Software and both projects have things to learn from each other – Mozilla can simplify its translation workflow and consider converging its currently sprawling tools and procedures, as it is in MediaWiki, and MediaWiki can learn a lot from Mozilla about building the localization teams as communities of people and about quality control.

Finally, i was very glad to meet Dwayne Bailey and Alexandru Szasz – developers of Pootle and Narro, two localization tools used in the Mozilla world. Talking to them was very interesting and inspiring – they both understand well the importance of localization and the shortcomings of the current tools, including the ones that they are developing, and they are keen on fixing them. As a result of this excellent meeting i completed the translation of Pootle itself into Hebrew. And there is more to come.

The Software Localization Paradox

Wikimania in Haifa was great. Plenty of people wrote blog posts about it; the world doesn’t need a yet another post about how great it was.

What the world does need is more blog posts about the great ideas that grew in the little hallway conversations there. One of the things that i discussed with many people at Wikimania is what i call The Software Localization Paradox. That’s an idea that has been bothering me for about a year. I tried to look for other people who wrote about it online and couldn’t find anything.

Like any other translation, software localization is best done by people who know well both the original language in which the software interface was written – usually English, and the target language. People who don’t know English strongly prefer to use software in a language they know. If the software is not available in their language, they will either not use it at all or will have to memorize lots of otherwise meaningless English strings and locations of buttons. People who do know English often prefer to use software in English even if it is available in their native language. The two most frequent explanations for that is that the translation is bad and that people who want to use computers should learn English anyway. The problem is that for various reasons lots of people will never learn English even if it would be mandatory in schools and useful for business. They will have to suffer the bad translations and will have no way to fix it.

I’ve been talking to people at Wikimania about this, especially people from India. (I also spoke to people from Thailand, Russia, Greece and other countries, but Indians were the biggest group.) All of them knew English and at least one language of India. The larger group of Indian Wikipedians to whom i spoke preferred English for most communication, especially online, even if they had computers and mobile phones that supported Indian languages; some of them even preferred to speak English at home with their families. They also preferred reading and writing articles in the English Wikipedia. The second, smaller, group preferred the local language. Most of these people also happened to be working on localizing software, such as MediaWiki and Firefox.

So this is the paradox – to fix localization bugs, someone must notice them, and to notice them, more people who know English must use localized software, but people who know English rarely use localized software. That’s why lately i’ve been evangelizing about it. Even people who know English well should use software in their language – not to boost their national pride, but to help the people who speak that language and don’t know English. They should use the software especially if it’s translated badly, because they are the only ones who can report bugs in the translation or fix the bugs themselves.

(A side note: Needless to say, Free Software is much more convenient for localization, because proprietary software companies are usually too hard to even approach about this matter; they only pay translators if they have a reason to believe that it will increase sales. This is another often overlooked advantage of Free Software.)

I am glad to say that i convinced most people to whom i spoke about it at Wikimania to at least try to use Firefox in their native language and taught them where to report bugs about it. I also challenged them to write at least one article in the Wikipedia in their own language, such as Hindi, Telugu or Kannada – as useful as the English Wikipedia is to the world, Telugu Wikipedia is much more useful for people who speak Telugu, but no English. I already saw some results.

I am now looking for ideas and verifiable data to develop this concept further. What are the best strategies to convince people that they should use localized software? For example: How economically viable is software localization? What is cheaper for an education department of a country – to translate software for schools or to teach all the students English? Or: How does the absence of localized software affect different geographical areas in Africa, India, the Middle East?

Any ideas about this are very welcome.

Translating Wikipedia Interface Into Amharic

There is a Wikipedia in the Amharic language, but it is developing slowly. One of the reasons for this is that the interface of MediaWiki, the software that is running the Wikipedia website, is translated into Amharic only partially, so people who don’t know Amharic can hardly use the website. Completing the translation of the interface will make the Amharic Wikipedia much more accessible to people who don’t know English. This is relevant not only to people who read and write Wikipedia online, but also to those who don’t have Internet access, because the Wikimedia Foundation and other organizations distribute offline copies of Wikipedia on CD-ROMs, printed books and other media.

Translation of Wikipedia’s interface is done by volunteers at the website translatewiki.net. I know this website well and i am willing to invest my time and teach any Amharic speaker who can translate software messages from English or from Hebrew. Practically no experience is needed – anyone who can use a web browser, can do this, too, and i shall provide all the needed support, anywhere in Israel. Do you know anyone who would be able to do this? This can be a great chance to improve one’s skills in computer use, in Amharic and in English and to help millions of Amharic speakers get access to one of the most important educational websites on the web.

If you know anyone who can help with it, please let me know.

Swap languages

I returned from Wikimania 2010 in Gdańsk. Wikimania is the annual world convention of enthusiasts of Wikipedia and related projects. It was the first time i attended it. My reason to attend this time was that Wikimania 2011 is scheduled to take place in Haifa and i’m on the organization committee, but the event was so intense and fun, that i hope to attend it every year in the future.

The best part of Wikimania is meeting the people behind the Wikipedia accounts and the names on the mailing lists. One of the people whom i looked forward to meeting is Gerard Meijssen, one of the multilingualism gurus of Wikipedia.

Time permitting, i’ll write many more things about Wikimania, but i really had to reply to Gerard’s post about Google Translate. Gerard and i slept in the the same dormitory for the first days. The receptionists there, as well as at the other dormitory in which i slept later, didn’t know a word of English. Luckily, i know Russian, so Polish is not completely foreign to me, but for people without Slavic background it is indeed tough.

On the second day of Wikimania i passed by the receptionist on my way out. There was a Wikimedian who tried to explain something to her. And she didn’t understand. I offered my help. He said that he forgot his key inside the room. I explained it to her in half-Russian half-bad-Polish; she understood me, checked the room number and said that that room has a lock that doesn’t lock the room when the door is shut. I told it to the guy, but he probably didn’t quite understand me and tried to communicate with her again.

So she opened Google Translate on her desktop computer, carefully selected Polish as “from” and English as “to” and wrote something. He approached the computer, pressed the “Swap languages” button, so he would be able to write an answer in English and translate it into Polish; at that point the receptionist took the mouse from him and “helped” him: she selected English as “from” and Polish as “to”. She didn’t see that the “Swap languages” button already swapped languages. This ritual repeated several times. As far as she was concerned, she was an expert Google Translate user.

Eventually they succeeded at understanding each other and he found his key, but i was really baffled by this lesson in software usability.

Intellectual Property – Moscow ’80

Funny.

“China Daily” is the official English newspaper of the government of the People’s Republic of China. China, quite naturally, is obsessed with the Olympics, so the China Daily website has an Olympic section. This is mostly well and good.

There is a “Past Games” link there. Click it. Then click on “1980 – Moscow”. What would you expect to find there? Great achievements of the Chinese sportsmen? No can do, China boycotted Moscow ’80; isn’t that ironic.

What you will find there is, arguably, the most memorable and wildly positive thing about that event—the “Farewell, Misha” song.

But wait a second … didn’t i mention it once? Why of course i did. And they copied my translation word for word.