Localization Blogs

Gnome localization has been a very smooth process for the localizers till now. No hinderance at all. Since quite a few months there has been a delay in getting account related quries sorted out, like New Account Request, Language not in the list of translation teams, etc. That’s what I observed from the mailing list activities. Since, I didn’t have any problem submitting my translation, I never accepted it.

Last month itself, I got a new community member (Sweta Kothari) in Gujarati Localization team. Firstly, I wanted to see Sweta’s translation capabilities and commitment to the Gujarati Localization projects. So, I haven’t tried to give the CVS/SVN access to her. Once, I figured out that Sweta is commited to the project and Gujarati skills were meeting my expectations, I thought to give her access for Gnome SVN account. I asked Sweta to apply for Gnome SVN access. The URL for SVN account request is: https://mango.gnome.org/new_account.php . I was surprised, when I didn’t see “Gujarati” in the list of Translation Teams. Gujarati has been always 100% in terms of translation since Gnome 2.16 if I remember correctly. So, I got frustrated when I couldn’t find Gujarati in the list of languages for the account request.

E-mail thread started on the gnome-i18n@gnome.org mailing list explaining the issue: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2008-July/msg00013.html which points towards the bug filed for Bengali India (bn_IN) language http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=508487 If you look at this bug, it’s filed since 10th January, 2008 (before 6 months actually), and no proper action has been taken from Gnome to resolve it.

It looks like Gnome seeks System Administrators! Interested ones can try: http://sysadmin.gnome.org/helping.html

Firefox, world’s most popular, faster and secure web browser. It provides you lot of flexibility to customize your browser as you wish. Would you not like to get such a wonderful web browser Localized into your native language? I am sure, you would.

As I told in my previous blog post, I never got a chance to work on Mozilla Localization Project (MLP) before joining Red Hat, because we didn’t have enough time to work on it. But I was really eager to do it. Situation remained same till couple of months after joining Red Hat too, as I have entered into a Multi National Company now, which I have never expected and I had to learn many new things - How the processes in MNCs work, style of working in a world’s leading Open Source company, company culture, plus some internal tasks, etc. And of course, the main task was to localize Fedora into Gujarati, which I have never worked before too. So, it took me couple of months to actually plan and start the Localization of Firefox and Thunderbird into Gujarati (gu-IN).

Before I actually plan and start working on Firefox/Thunderbird Localization, the task has already been taken up by my native language community (Utkarsh) members. In the early December 2004, I heard that Mozilla has been localized by Utkarsh team into Gujarati (gu-IN) and released on 25th November. Before that, I wasn’t aware about the fact that Utkarsh team has actually started working on Mozilla Localization. The problem was from my side only. I never tried to keep myself in sync with Utkarsh team after I left Magnet. Then only, I realized that, How am I supposed to work in Open Source and with Open Source community. I talked with my friends over there in Utkarsh group and discussed future plans for Localization of various other Open Source projects. By then, they have already started working on Firefox Localization, which was an easy task for them, as they were already familiar with the Mozilla Localization process, which is quite similar to Firefox Localization. So, I have taken charge for Thunderbird Localization.

January 05, 2005, Utkarsh released Firefox 1.0 Localization on Utkarsh website and incorporated it into Gujarati Live CD - “Utkarsh". I released Thunderbird 1.0.6 into Gujarati on IndianOSS on January 06, 2005. But, the thing is, language packs released for Firefox/Thunderbird on IndiaOSS/Utkarsh is not considered as official release of Mozilla, because it’s not tested and verified/approved by Mozilla. So, the next challenge for us was, to get Gujarati Firefox and Thunderbird tested and verified by Mozilla and get it included into upstream Mozilla. To all localizers, here, I would like to pass one important message:

Please don’t stop working on Localization of any open source project, until you get it released upstream! Otherwise, the whole world (may be, except Localizers) will not get the benefits out of your extraordinary efforts! Because world is actually aware about upstream projects only, but may not be aware about your language community website. So, for any Open Source Localization, may be run process within your community, but target upstream!

Back to the topic! Getting Mozilla language pack upstream is not an easy task. It’s not just that you completed the translation, means your language will get a place on Mozilla upstream. You need to be very accurate, complete the translation 100% (error-free) and follow the standard Mozilla Localization process strictly. If you miss anything out of these, your language will not get included on the Mozilla upstream! It took me lot of time to understand the process completely, even though it’s well-defined. Because it’s quite complex for the localizers like me, who used to follow the simple and easy process for any other major Open Source Projects for doing the Localization! Almost same time Amanpreet Singh Aalam, a co-ordinator of Punjabi Localization community - Punlinux - and I have started localizing the Firefox and Thunderbird. So, we used to communicate with Axel Hecht (nick: Pike), who is the Localization Lead for Firefox, Pascal, and many others from Mozilla team to help us getting our languages included upstream Mozilla. Axel has really made our life easy, while we were trying to figure out the process.

The process of Firefox/Thunderbird Localization involves four major steps:
1. Build/Join the team
2. Understand and follow the Localization process workflow
3. Build language packs
4. Get the language packs and/or translations included upstream.
I have tried to describe all of these steps in detail on this URL: Firefox/Thunderbird Localization Process , where I have put all URLs of official Mozilla Localization process. There are quite a few technical challenges as well, which we might talk later in other blog posts…

Even though we understood the process and followed it very well, kept Axel in loop all the time, it took around six months of time for us to get our languages actually released on Mozilla upstream for Firefox and Thunderbird both. Finally, Gujarati was available on Mozilla downloads urls (Firefox, Thunderbird) with release 1.5. That was really an achievement! Since then, I am continuously updating Firefox and Thunderbird Localization into Gujarati. And now it’s time to see Firefox 3 with Gujarati soon… Beta! and RC!

One thing, I would like to tell to upcoming Mozilla localizers that, “Once your language is released on upstream Mozilla, process of Mozilla Localization becomes easy compared to earlier! You just need to maintain the translations at the time of each release and resolve technical issues, if any issue comes.”

In 2007, July 13-15, I got an opportunity to present a talk and conduct the workshop on Localization in an event called “National Conference on Open Source“, organized in Ahmedabad (India), which is the largest city in the state of Gujarat. There I met Christofer Hoffman, the director of engineering of the Mozilla Foundation and Seth Bindernagel, who works on Mozilla’s evangelism team. We couldn’t spend much time on discussing the Mozilla and Localization, as both Chris and Seth has to catch the flight. But, we had a separate event for Mozilla in Mumbai (India) few days after this conference. The event “Join Hands with Firefox“, was organized by Nirav, where I have been invited to discuss about our future plans on Localization of Mozilla. To read about the event, read Seth’s blog. After this meet, we formed a group for Mozilla India Localization contributors, where we gathered all contributors from India, and discussed India specific things in Mozilla Development. You can find recent discussions here.

So, that’s all about my experience localizing Firefox and Thunderbird till date!

Hi,

First post in the blog world !

Somewhere in November 2003, I and my college friends (Ankur Patel, Atit Shah, Bhavin Shah and Sweta Kothari) visited Mumbai, heart of India, in search of a software company, which can accommodate us as a software interns and guide us to work on some good software project. That was my first visit to Mumbai, a metro city in which life is very fast that’s what my friends and people told. I managed to figure out why the life in metro is fast, after traveling in the Mumbai Local Trains & Buses. That was an awesome experience and fun too! There is lot more to talk about Mumbai, which I am not going to do now, even the entire book won’t be sufficient to describe Mumbai and life in Mumbai.

After reaching to Mumbai, the first place for us to visit is Magnet-i, where Atit, Bhavin, Sweta and Khushbu were already invited for the interview. Me and Ankur has to search for another company to do our internship training. Luckily, Mr. Nirav Mehta, the CEO of Magnet group, had given a chance to me and Ankur too to sit for an interview. It was surprising as well as good opportunity too for both of us to face the interview. Interview has started and my performance was very bad, as couldn’t speak in English as fluent as others. And finally, except me all others got selected immediately. But, we were a group since college and wanted to work together. So, my friends, who got selected, requested the CEO to allow me also in the internship, and at the same time I added “I can do programming very well". Mr. Nirav looked at me and told, “Congratulations, you can join us too!". Yo hoo!

Now, after getting selected for the internship trainee, we have been explained about the project, Linux Localization, on which we have to work and we have been asked to read about it before actually joining for the internship training. Just like other college dudes, we also did nothing…

We were completely blank on the day of joining, 5th January 2004. Now, the task assigned to us, was to read the websites like www.indlinux.org , www.indictrans.org , etc, and understand the Localization on Linux & processes. The links given to us, were pretty much helpful and we figured out the concept of Localization and it’s processes within a week. Still, we were not clear about the broader picture of the Localization, and to get that idea, Mr. Nirav has arranged a meet with Indlinux coordinator Mr. Karunakar, Prof. Jeetendra Shah & his team in Powai, Mumbai. We got lot of gyan about the broader picture of the project and translation tools like kbabel from Swapnil Hajare, Indictrans member. We saw, Rangoli Live CD too, brought by Mr. Karunakar. After this, we had a dinner party with all team members and Karunakar in Borivali, Mumbai. We began discussing Localization there too and picture of the project is getting more and more clear now. We learned about l10n, i18n, fonts, how to enable indic typing using xkb, .po files, po to mo conversion and test it on the gui. So, the process is very much clear to us. We started using Padma fonts, developed by indictrans team.

Now, it’s time for us to make a plan and implement it in our process. Bhavin Shah, who has a very good leading skills was selected as a Team Lead for our team. We were divided into separate groups. Translation team, Proof-reading team, Fonts team (which was formed in the mid of the project), Technical Team. So, Translation team does the translation and it’s being proof-read by the Proof-reading team. Even though we were divided into separate groups, we were rotating the responsibilities between these teams. So, everyone will have hands on experience of the entire process and the quality of the work we do becomes much better. Soon after a month, Kartik Mistry has joined our team, who used to be Nirav’s shool-mate. Now, we are members team. Btw, we have been asked to blog our daily progress too. Surprisingly, we have never heard the world Blog before that! We started blogging our progress, but it wasn’t as good as it should be and finally we couldn’t continue doing it.

Our first milestone to achieve the Linux Localization is to complete the Gnome 2.4 translations. The process for Gnome localization was pretty easy. We completed Gnome 2.4 translations within one and half month only, and that was a record at that time I think. But, soon the record was broken by Punjabi translation team, who completed the gnome translation within a month only! After completing Gnome translation, next target for us is to complete the very popular Linux Office suite, Openoffice.org Localization and following to it is the Localization of the most popular web browser, Firefox.

Openoffice.org Localization, has been very challenging task for us. It took almost a month for us to complete the translation and a month to get the localized build. There are quite a few good tips available too - http://www.khmeros.info/tools/localization_tips.html , which can help in Openoffice.org localization. Somehow, we achieved it too!

During the same period when some of the team members working on Openoffice, Khushbu and Ankur created a nice looking Gujarati font. It was named as Rekha font. That’s my mother’s name!

Next task, Firefox Localization, for which we didn’t have enough time left to work on, as our internship training period was about to over in the month of May. So, we started working on creating Live CD, which can be presented into our college and our college professors as our project. Live CD we created was based on Morphix. A manual that helped us is: http://www.morphix.org/doc/how_tos/docbook_html/index.html . Finally, we were ready with the Live CD, which runs directly into Gujarati language in Linux Operating system based on Morphix. After spending lot of time on deciding the name, finally we named the project Utkarsh… Now, it’s in local news paper, midday - http://www.utkarsh.org/images/midday_article.jpg . 27th May 2004, we had an official launch of the project. Gujarati Live CD - Utkarsh version 0.1 is launched by Shri Kanti Bhatt, a well known Gujarati writer.

After finishing the internship in May 2004, Khushboo, me and Kartik continued working in Magnet-i.com on the same project. Now, we were no more college students, but an employees working in a reputed software company, Magnet-i.com. Style of working has been changed, professionalism started developing into us. In the next month, June 2004, we got a call from Red Hat, a dream company for any Linux person, for an interview, for the post of a Technical Translation. Mr. Satish Mohan from Red Hat conducted an interview, and I got selected! I joined Red Hat Pune in July 2004.

Now the real journey of Localization has started. Started understanding the word Open source. Started working on as many open source projects as possible and Localized many applications. Worked on XFCE localization, Firefox/Thunderbird Localization, xchat, realplayer translations, etc. In June 2006, I started a project called IndianOSS, the purpose for it is same, Localization!

So, this is how I entered into the Localization World!