“Local Language Efforts” by the various government agencies
Posted by Sayamindu 1 year, 6 months ago
The government has recently shown a lot of interest about Free/Open Software, especially in the area of localization for Indian/Indic languages. However, this well meaning interest has resulted in some totally clueless individuals and agencies being delegated to work on these issues, resulting in a major mess. The prime example of this would be BOSS Linux, which has not bothered to work with the community in any way (at least for the translations), and a result, it looks like a large amount of work (paid for from the tax payer’s money) is going to be wasted. Gora has started a thread on the gnome-i18n mailing list on this, and we can see no easy way to reutilize the work done. Interestingly, as per the comments in Sankarshan-da’s blog post on this matter, the government agency responsible for this had actually contacted some people in the community (via a 3rd party), offering to pay around USD 0.07 per string translated. The condition was that the work needed to be secret and exclusive for BOSS. That’s interesting for an “Open Source” project, funded by the government.
Closer home, there’s this “Baishakhi Linux” distribution, which makes quite dubious claims such as “All Bangla compound words can be viewed and written in Baishakhi Linux, and this special feature distinguishes it from the other localized Linux distributions.“. After making this statement, they go on to show a list of “compound words” (conjuncts, or yuktakshars), of which, I believe only _one_ is not writeable in stock OpenOffice.org/GNOME, and the fix for that is a one liner (bug, with patch).
I downloaded the ISO image from their website (I didn’t see any link to any source code), and started it up in a VM. It looks like they took the existing upstream translations, made minor modifications to them (which includes adding the English msgid in parenthesis at the end of each msgstr). They took care, however, to replace each translator_credit translation with their own name. I ran msgunfmt on the Evolution mo file, and though the translator_credit had been changed, the header read:
“Last-Translator: Promathesh Mandal <promatesh@mat3impex.com>\n”
“Language-Team: Bengali <gnome-translation@bengalinux.org>\n”
In case you are wondering, gnome-translation@bengalinux.org is the email address of the upstream GNOME translation community for Bengali.
This kind of approach makes me pretty pissed off. In the past, we have included all the names possible in the translator_credit translation, IMHO that is the least the Baishakhi Linux people could have done.
It’s a sad state of affairs – it really is.
Check out http://mat3impex.com/mat3impex/index.php as well
i wonder how the widgets would love the bn + en in bracket strings…
Sayamindu,
I didn’t know you provided Bengali “Fronts”[1].
And the flash design is too nice.
[1]http://60.32.71.29/baishakhilinux/index.php?option=com_contact&Itemid=3
I meant see under “Bengali Resources” tab.
The link was wrong.
time for http://gpl-violations.org/ or wait-and-see?
Dear All,
I have come across Sayamindu’s blog posting and was amused, pained and surprised in the same breath.
Let us be objective first.
1. The release was on the 8th of September and it was planned to make the source code available upstream, within a few days as is expected of open-source activities. Please keep your weather eyes open on the SNLTR site. So, Sankarshan, you need not feel that the effort will go waste.
2. Mr. Toshi Kubota (mail cc’d to him) is a pioneer in Open-Source and Linux related movements in Japan. We will ensure that all gpl requirements are adhered to in accordance with his guidance. Please note that the inauguration was only day before yesterday !!!!
3. I wonder whether in the existing versions we could write words like র্যাপার, আর্য, and a few more could be written properly.
4. I am not sure whether in the existing versions of Open-Office spreadsheet, computations could be carried out in Bangla.
5. I know ( because Indranil Dasgupta himself told me on the first day we were discussing and demonstrating a prelim version of Baishakhi Linux) that the existing Linux versions, printout of complex Bengali scripts through Firefox was not possible – thanks to Indranil – this problem is not there in Baishakhi Linux.
6. The contributions may be incremental, (as suggested by Sayamindu – a one line code), but that is there now. Baishakhi Linux need not make tall claims, it was a very low budget effort and the spirit should be to contribute more by pointing out bugs and improving on it.
7. We ensure that no credit titles will be demeaned. Last-Translator does not demean others I think and that is the convention. Still to err is human. So please play straight – point out any omissions in a constructive way.
I am amused because how fast we can react with blogs etc. , when they could have written to us directly.
I am pained because my invitations to some of the Open-Source groups to join hands in these activities was met with absolute silence.
I am surprised because I thought Open-Source activities call for Open-Minds, joining hands in an endeavor. I thought the philosophy was
“Let a hundred flowers blossom. Let a thousand thoughts contend”. As always, being in academics I was wrong. We are too fast in circulating over blogs without discussing when the avenues exist.
Best of regards,
Anupam Basu
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অনুপম বসু
I have a blog response at http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2008/09/10/it-only-gets-funnier/