A ‘Pootle’ for CC Software
One attendee of the iCommons Summit in June was happier then most. During the Creative Commons localisation discussion, Dwayne Bailey, acommons.org/wp-content/uploads/ South African and one of the co-directors of the WordForge project had the pleasure of seeing WordForge’s web-based translation tool adopted by Creative Commons (CC).
The tool, fondly called ‘Pootle‘, allowed Jon Phillips, CC’s Open Source Developer and Nathan Yergler, CC’s Software engineer, to easily enable anyone to translate the ccHost and ccPublisher software into their own language. Jon and Nathan were looking for a way to make it easier for people to translate CC software.
At the Summit, Dwayne decided to attend a session run by Jon on the localisation of CC software. The Summit brought Dwayne, Jon and Nathan together. Nathan had already done some initial research into Pootle but of course having one of the WordForge project team on hand made it easy for him to install and configure the software. The site went live at the end of that very day.
‘For me this was so unexpected. And to see the software live within a few hours was amazing. I believe it’s a true demonstration that collaboration and sharing can create powerful solutions,’ Dwayne said.
Pootle effectively allows Nathan to upload the files that need to be translated, and since it is a web-based application, the translation interface itself is easy to use. Budding translators are up and running in no time.
For example, Jedi Lin, a Chinese speaking user of ccHost and member of the Creative Commons community, decided that he just couldn’t live without a Chinese translation of the software and decided to volunteer to translate it. He created an account, the CC team enabled translation into Chinese and Jedi began translating. You can now access Jedi’s translation here.
Pootle is a component of the WordForge project. The tool is named after a fluffy character in a 1970s BBC children’s program called ‘The Flumps’. The WordForge team is not really sure how this came about, but the catchy name has stuck.
Dwayne started the Translate.org.za project to localise software into the 11 official languages of South Africa. The project has been very successful; releasing the OpenOffice.org office suite in 11 languages in September 2005.
Together with Javier Sola of the KhmerOS project, which undertook translating FOSS into Khmer, they founded the WordForge project. The project was started as a result of the frustration both teams experienced as they localised, and they realised the importance of the localisation of software into minority languages.
Thus, the Wordforge project, with funding from the Open Society Institute, is building tools to make it easier for everyone to localise software, while also creating good processes and tools to ensure that the creation of software translations are of a high quality.
The WordForge team has been quick to realise that localisation of content is a really important aspect of access to knowledge. ‘We can have all the content in the world but if we are not creating and translating content then we are not reaching all the people of the world or creating dialogue between them,’ Dwayne said.
WordForge is working on a number of filters that will in time make it easier to localise any type of content.
Are you wondering what skills you would need to translate ccHost and ccPublisher into your language? The answer: a passion for your mother tongue and the ability to translate into another language. You should also be a user of the ccHost or ccPublisher software.
Take some time to think about how translating ccHost or ccPublisher would empower many people to be creative if you spent a while localising it. Has this CC software been translated into your language yet? Don’t wait for someone else to do it some day ‘ just sign up now and get translating.