Posted on September 30, 2009 - by jono
Ubuntu In Your Language
One of the most wonderful, and oftern underrated parts of the Ubuntu community are our tremendous translators. It is these awesome individuals that re-enforce the ethos that everyone should be able to enjoy Ubuntu in the locale and language that is comfortable to them. Not only that, but it is these folks that are breaking down cultural barriers to Ubuntu adoption across the world. In many cases, when a region or government is exploring Open Source and Free Software, the first assessment is if it is available in their locale and language(s).
Ubuntu is already available in an impressive collection of languages that we consider complete enough for general use. This includes Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, German, English, Hungarian, Traditional Chinese, British English, Russian, Dutch, Japanese, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Catalan, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Basque, Greek, Simplified Chinese, Slovenian, Galician and Asturian.
A good target for completeness is 80% of the distribution being fully translated, with a particular focus on primary and visible packages. Many of these languages are rib-ticklingly close and I would love to encourage those of you who speak the language to help get them over the 80% barrier. These include:
- Serbian – 79%
- Vietnamese – 78%
- Estonian – 75%
- Hebrew – 73%
- Bengali – 73%
- Gujarati – 72%
- Hindi – 71%
- Turkish – 70%
- Tamil – 69%
- Telugu – 69%
- Bokm̴l, Norwegian Р67%
- Slovak – 66%
- Macedonian – 64%
- Nepali – 63%
- Arabic – 63%
- Dzongkha – 62%
- Finnish – 61%
- Breton – 60%
- Ukrainian – 57%
- Esperanto – 56%
- Central Khmer – 56%
- Norwegian Nynorsk – 55%
- Thai – 52%
- Panjabi – 52%
- Lithuanian – 51%
- Romanian – 50%
This is an awesome opportunity for the Ubuntu Global Jam in which Ubuntu contributors are getting together around the world to work together on Ubuntu in a variety of ways – documentation, packaging, advocacy, bug triage, translations and more. If you would like to help one of the above languages (or any other language, for that matter), why not organize a small gathering at someone’s house, at a pub/restaurant, university room or anywhere else? These jams are easy to put together, tonnes of fun and a great way to meet other awesome Ubuntu people.
Whether you get together at a jam or just want to contribute from home, more details and guidance for getting involved in translating Ubuntu can be found here. Rock on, translations friends!
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September 30, 2009
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Regional languages need a mention too. Like Irish. These languages are important because Microsoft ignores these languages so we should say its a feature that we have them and Windows and Mac dont.
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September 30, 2009
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I agree local/regional languages are a very useful addition. I will chat to my father to see what I can do about adding Jersey French to the list. It’s a shame but I can’t speak it myself but I know that the schools are now starting to teach it.
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September 30, 2009
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Shane,
IMO, when telling the Gaeltacht about Ubuntu and Free Software, it’s better to say, “Ni lia tir na nos, agus ni neart go cur le cheile!”
Slainte.
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October 1, 2009
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Esperanto, that’s fantastic.
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October 1, 2009
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The glaring gap in Ubuntu/GNOME language coverage is en-gb-oed (i.e. correct British English according to the dictionary, rather than according to tabloid newspapers and paperback books). I bet a script could generate that one from the en-gb-ise and en-us files. It’s shocking to think that Bokmal Norwegian is ahead of its English equivalent.
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October 2, 2009
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These numbers are quite bad, but I have some ideas why, and I don’t like it at all:
First off: I hear that Ubuntu doesn’t use the official translations from upstream, and don’t contribute back upstream. If this is true, it is utterly ridiculous!
It’s way too hard to get started translating. It should be dead easy for any newbee to start helping out in this way. Translating is kindof the easiest way to help out if you can’t code or anything like that. But in Ubuntu it’s not, because it’s so hard to get started. You didn’t even tell us in this post how to get started, just linked to a wiki with a lot of text, that no newbee will care to read trough! I don’t have a solution, but you need to find one!
3: There should be an easy way to list the apps that needs translating by how much they’re used by normal users. Translating things that are only used by hardcore geeks is much less important than translating the most used GUI stuff used by parents and grandparents.
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October 2, 2009
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Macedonian??? wtf!
The real name is Fyrom!