Improving Ubuntu Localization
Unlike proprietary platforms–and some Linux distributions–Ubuntu doesn’t identify primarily with any single country or language. The operating system’s developers are spread around the world, and aim to make their product equally accessible to all users, regardless of their locales. But how well have the challenges of localization been met?
As an American and a native speaker of English, I may not be best qualified for answering that question. Although Ubuntu, in principle, does not privilege English over other languages, it’s clear that understanding English is an advantage for Ubuntu users–the community documentation is written in English, for example, and English is the only language accepted on most parts of the Ubuntu forums.
While I may not know from personal experience what it’s like to speak a minority language and use Ubuntu, however, I was intrigued by Jef Spaleta’s comments regarding Ubuntu language support on a recent blog post, where Jef points out that Fedora gives greater priority to translations. Here are my thoughts on Ubuntu localization, and how it could be done better.
Ubuntu LoCo teams
There are currently about seventy LoCo teams registered on Launchpad (significantly, about twice as many are in the process of becoming organized, highlighting the need for more volunteers to handle localization tasks). These teams are responsible for marketing Ubuntu in their local regions and supporting local users, and play a vital role in making Ubuntu available to people outside the anglophone world.
The LoCos do a lot of important work, but in order to be most effective, they need to be more centrally organized and have their tasks more clearly delegated by Canonical. Currently, the productivity of the LoCo groups is inconsistent, with many teams failing to meet the level of commitment expected of them.
Rather than relying solely on the community to localize Ubuntu, Canonical should take a more direct role in ensuring that the unique needs of diverse regions are taken into account. This might mean paying a few people to work with the LoCos and ensure they have the resources to achieve their goals, but it would go a long way towards making Ubuntu more attractive to international users.
Translations
In principle, Ubuntu is available in more than 200 languages–which is quite impressive given that Windows is translated into fewer than fifty versions. However, Ubuntu’s achievments on the language front become less noteworthy when we consider that more than half of the translation projects exist in name only, with only negligible progress made.
Again, Canonical should invest greater resources into coordinating the translation of Ubuntu. Great software is of little use to people who don’t understand the language in which its interfaces are written, and currently, Ubuntu remains largely untranslated into numerous widely spoken languages, like Persian and Hindi.
At the same time, resources are being squandered translating Ubuntu into languages that no one speaks natively, like Esperanto and Latin. I’m sure there are some linguists and classicists out there who would enjoy using Linux in these languages, but aren’t there better ways to use the free-software community’s resources right now?
Ubuntu could do a better job of making itself usable by people who don’t speak English. Greater efforts by Canonical and Ubuntu developers to supplement the work of LoCo teams and translators are greatly needed if Ubuntu wants to become Linux for all human beings, no matter where they live or which language they speak.
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I don’t speak English as a first language.. And I couldn’t care less. I use the English version whether it’s Ubuntu, Windows, or anything else.
Computers are one of the best ways to learn English. Taught me a lot more than the pathetic public school system.
My message to the scoundrels complaining about localization – use the English version and do yourself a favor. Localization should be of relatively low priority compared to the OS itself and functionality, IMO.
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Resources are being squandered translating Ubuntu into languages that no one speaks natively, like Esperanto and Latin.
If a foremost concern is to make good use of localization resources, then the important question is not, “which Ubuntu users speak XXXX language natively?”, but rather, “who would use Ubuntu if localized into XXXX language?”. The assumption implicit in the first question is that only native speakers of a language will ultimately want to use software in that language. For most languages, that may be a good rule of thumb, but not for some, such as Esperanto. About 2,000,000 people speak Esperanto, most (all but about 2,000) as non-natives. Esperanto is several times easier to learn than other languages, including English, even for speakers of non-Indo-European languages, and its speakers are scattered surprisingly evenly around the world, so it’s not all that far-fetched that a significant number of Ubuntu users would not have enough of it localized into their native languages, and would feel far more comfortable with Esperanto than with some other language.
I’m sure there are some linguists and classicists out there who would enjoy using Linux in these languages, but aren’t there better ways to use the free-software community’s resources right now?
For most Esperanto speakers, Esperanto is more than a mere academic curiosity. It is a real, living language with as much expressive power as any other living, natural language.
The comment “aren’t there better ways to use…” assumes that if Esperanto localization resources are somehow drawing resources away from other languages – that if they didn’t work on Esperanto, they would or could be persuaded to work on other languages instead, and that no one else could be enticed to work on those other languages. Esperanto localizers do not prevent anyone else from working on other languages, and based on my knowledge of the Esperanto community, I think it unlikely they would spontaneously work on other languages, especially if prevented from working on the Esperanto version.
I don’t speak English as a first language.. And I couldn’t care less. I use the English version whether it’s Ubuntu, Windows, or anything else.
I’m glad that you are free to use the language version of your choice.
My message to the scoundrels complaining about localization – use the English version and do yourself a favor. Localization should be of relatively low priority compared to the OS itself and functionality, IMO.
You can’t use features unless you can understand them; usability is thus as important as functionality. Even if you don’t buy that, the UI is certainly part of the OS. Despite its reputation as being easy, English is a difficult language. In a free market, the customer is always right. Put those all together, and localization becomes of prime imporatance.
I’m a non-native speaker of English, but use its version of Ubuntu.The main reason for doing so is that my native language is spoken only by 13 million people, that too mostly only inside my country. Anyhow, my countrymen prefer to learn English, as they think it’s the ticket to communicate with the whole world. So, whether Ubuntu is localised for my native language or not it’s not going to be a big problem at all.
Main website ubuntu.com need to be Multi-language,
esa es mi opinion.
@Juancarlospaco:
Entire websites can be very difficult to translate if it contains a significant amount of dynamic information.
But it should be possible to get signficant native language coverage of important information if you do a good job of separating important static content from dynamic content and prioritizing the static content.
For example the main page for the Fedora Project http://fedoraproject.org/ is offered in many languages, you’ll see the language selection box in the lower left hand corner. That page is reasonably static as are a few other important links off that page. But the Fedora wiki is not static, and as a result links from that main page into the wiki doesn’t always bring you to natively translated content.
When doing translation work you have to prioritize. In Fedora the release notes are prioritized highly.
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/
as well as the primarily static web pages off of the main page
http://fedoraproject.org/hu/index
http://fedoraproject.org/hu/get-fedora
http://fedoraproject.org/hu/join-fedora
http://fedoraproject.org/hu/get-help
There is an effort to translate the wiki as well
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Languages
There is still room for improvement of course. The get-help page could refer to the specific irc channel for that language when it exists instead making people hit the wiki page that lists all the different irc channels.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate#IRC
And looking at the Ubuntu wiki Jaunty’s release notes have translations as well. What’s not clear to me is how you actually discover them without knowing how the wiki is structured. I don’t see a language pull down box or a listing of available languages.
Starting from the main page: http://www.ubuntu.com/
and following only a set of links or webpage elements (not typing in an actual URL,) can you tell me how to get to the German translated release notes for Jaunty? They exist, but I don’t know how to navigate to them.
It’s a little odd to me that the Ubuntu community makes the effort to do the hard work of translating the release notes, but then that effort is stuck in a corner and quite difficult to find without using some intuition about how the Ubuntu wiki is organized. How is a new native Germany speaking user expected to discover the release notes? Or for that matter discover the correct ubuntu iso image to download and use?
I’m not sure if any of the other Jaunty web based material like the desktop tour is available in other languages. It could be there, and I don’t know how to access it.
-jef