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Re: Ubuntu Manual Translations

 

>
> I think translations must begin only -after- the final english manual has
> been released, to ensure a full freeze and minimal disturbance and loss of
> work for the translators. I think it has basically been decided that in
> future, the manual itself, english or otherwise, will be released at least 2
> weeks after the Ubuntu OS release date, because the Ubuntu developers have
> proven that they cannot enforce the UI freeze and continue adding things up
> to the last minute, sometimes even after release candidate.


We can start the translation of some chapters just even before the release
of Ubuntu, let me be more specific. The following chapters' text is almost
independent from UI changes (based on 10.04 e2 manual):

Prologue (4 pages)
Learning more (5 pages)
Glossary (3 pages)
Working with Ubuntu from page 50 -web browsing- up to page 99 -Taking
notes-  (50 pages)
Hardware -Bruning Cds- pages 105-108 (4 pgs)
Command line (8 pages)

74 (of 145 pages with translatable content based), on the previous manual
can be translated even before the release of manual !

So for the next release all the translation teams that have translated the
first manual will have to do almost the half
 work! Maybe the pages will differ from release to release but the fact is
that the proportion of the work isn't so big as it may seem. So i think we
can afford to release translated editions with every edition of the manual.
I know well the whole progress of a translated edition, and the most hard
job is on translations, the editing isn't so hard and you can deal with it
easier because of the help of Kevin and others on channel.

Also *a note regarding all the translators*. Try to initiate a translation
team on your LoCo team regarding only the manual, communicate with each
other, take back ups of you work everyday. In this way and even (with a core
of) 3-4 translators you can cope with workload in almost month and believe
me this team after the release of the manual will appeal double or even
triple translators than the first team.

We should keep on releasing translated editions cause in this way we make
the project even stronger and known. Cutting the translated edition is like
cutting a useful potential.


Thank you for your time

-John
c7p @ freenode

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