[olpc-software] Scaling and localization in package management

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 04:54:30PM -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
> time (see http://babelfish.altavista.com or equivalent) but
> semi-automatic translation could be a good match for our needs. Imagine

As actual data. The Welsh translation of Gnome, KDE, Firefox and OpenOffice
represents about 30 main peoples work probably in the order of 40-50 man years
(including creating some new vocabulary and researching other material that
had only colloquial words) almost all done voluntarily. Tools handle a lot 
of the contribution management and hard work but it would not have been viable
to do it by machine and the quality of the translation was critical to 
acceptance. The acceptability of non-descript translation for manuals and
even more so for things like letters and web pages is different to the tools
people use day in and day out.

Another factor to remember: a lot of local languages sound attractive don't
forget that many many people speak a local language but do not read or write
it, and often read or write a more widespread language of the area. They may
not want their local language for the computer.

Also if you skip Papua New Guinea for now you've halved the problem space ;)

Alan