Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 17:29:26 +0100 (MET) From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Hackers) Subject: Re: A German version of Walnut Creek's FreeBSD 2.1 CD Message-ID: <199512041629.RAA13196@allegro.lemis.de> In-Reply-To: <4023.817938272@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Dec 2, 95 01:04:32 pm
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Jordan K. Hubbard writes: > > Well, for a variety of reasons, we've decided to do versions of the CD > specific to various local markets... > The only issue is, we have to first decide on how we're going to > do it! > > The help files the 2.1 installer uses live in the > /usr/src/release/sysinstall/help directory (if you installed from 2.1 > media, you'll also see them in your /stand/help directory). They're > easy to translate, and certainly represent the path of least > resistance for any translator. > > I think that the Handbook approach, despite the teething troubles > we're almost certainly going to have with it, is the right way to go. > It will let the translations be used both on the boot floppy (one > version for each language this time) and on the regional WWW servers > that are starting to pop up. Well, I may be in a minority, but I don't think that the WWW servers are very useful. Here in Germany, certainly, the time it takes to read the handbook from the web makes it completely impractical (yes, I know, half a dozen Germans will get up and shout me down, but they're the exceptions who have good, cheap network connects). Still, I also think that it's not good installation practice to boot up first and then start reading the documentation. Point people to a, say, three-level hierarchy of documentation that they can print out on any old ASCII printer first, and they should be a lot happier (of course, there's also no reason not to supply it in other forms too). I'd suggest the following three levels of detail: 1. One page for experienced users: "Copy your boot disk from the distribution, stick it in your machine and follow the instructions" 2. Five pages: An overview of the installation process. 3. The whole handbook. > Two goals, then, that we need to begin thinking about if we want to > do this: > > 1. Re-form the translation team. I liked the model we had in 2.0.5, > where there was one "lead" translator and a couple of backup > translators. A momentary glitch in communications before that had 2 > people working on a parallel translation for one of the languages and > it was a mess trying to smash them back together. One translator and > one translation style per language seems to work best, with the other > translators making suggestions or small improvements. Sounds reasonable. > 2. Think about what needs to happen in the handbook for translation > to really become as a viable option there. Just how much do you want to translate? I have a serious problem with German literature because there isn't any accepted, one-to-one translation of English terms. Reading German man pages, for example, can be very painful, and unless the person who did the translation really knows his stuff, it can become extremely confusing. Considering that large parts of the handbook could do with a lot of polishing in the original English, this could become a serious problem. Certainly you want a lot of reviewers. Greg
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