Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:15:01 +0200 From: Gabor Kovesdan <gabor@FreeBSD.org> To: doc@FreeBSD.org, www@FreeBSD.org Subject: HEADSUP: Translations of our documentations Message-ID: <48138D45.6040601@FreeBSD.org>
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Dear Folks, I'm writing this mail to get your attention about the importance of our documentation projects. We tend to neglect the importance of the translation projects, thinking that the majority of our users speaks the English language well and does not need any documents in other languages. It is not really true, though. Expert users tend to speak English well, but nowadays the UNIX-like systems are not limited to expensive servers and workstations because they can serve as a cheap and efficient replacement for the commercial desktop operating systems, too. FreeBSD also aims to be a multi-purpose operating system and its derived projects, PC-BSD and DesktopBSD are especially designed for desktop users. There are ongoing efforts to make FreeBSD easier to install so that everybody can install it on his own desktop system. Apart from this, it is also necessary to provide more language support for those, who don't speak English so well. Furthermore, the user basis what we can get by providing better language support will thank us the effort; don't forget that contributors will grow up from users and committers will grow up from contributors. Summarizing this, language support is demanded, useful and shows up as an "added value" of a software product. If you translate, it is not only useful for the project, but useful for you. Let's see what you get if you start translating documents. First of all, you get respect. Users will say thanks to you and will respect you for what you have done for them. Secondly, there's no better translator reference than a published translation on a website of such a well-known and respected product, like FreeBSD. It is something that you can make use of, that you can present in your CV as a working experience of a translator. Thirdly, FreeBSD uses a well-designed infrastructure of its documentation using technologies and standards, like SGML, XML, XSLT, HTML, DocBook, DSSSL, CSS. Using these tools to design infrastructures to develop technical documentation is an independent profession, which is called Documentation Engineer. At the first sight, this markup might seem complicated and difficult to you, but if you are committed enough, you can get some knowledge of it, which is again, something like that you can make use of in your career. So, what do you think? Do you feel like translating? If so, you need to find out how to start out. If there is an existing documentation project for your language, refer to the appropriate link on the translators page to get the details about joining: http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/translations.html If there's no such project yet, you can refer to the doc@FreeBSD.org mailing list for further information. I'm also happy to give a helping hand to new volunteers wanting to join the project. There is also a wiki page set up for the translation project with general information: http://wiki.freebsd.org/DocTranslationProjects Thanks for your attention and I'm looking further to your comments and suggestions. Regards, Gábor Kövesdán
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