Frequently Used Entries for Localization (FUEL)
Rajesh Ranjan is one of our lead localizers in India. Aside from working to complete the Hindi translation of Firefox, Rajesh does a lot of community organizing and outreach to open source enthusiasts around localization efforts.
He recently held a workshop to disuss a new effort called FUEL: Frequently Used Entries for Localization. Rajesh describes FUEL in a blog post with the following:
“…all major desktop related entries [needing localization] appearing on menus and sub-menus are not more than five-six hundred. So if we move to standardize a mere 500-600 entries and the process is backed by the active localizers and entities who get benefit from localization then we can make a successful move against the problem of standardization and inconsistency in software translation. This is the main idea behind FUEL.”
To learn more about FUEL, please read this post by Rajesh. And, here is one more link about FUEL.
I fail to see how FUEL is any different from a reputable, well-maintained glossary list. Also, naming it FUEL adds more identity confusion since FUEL also stands for the Firefox User Extension Library.
We use a tool called poterminology (http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/toolkit/poterminology) that is part of the Translate Toolkit to develop terminology lists for all the work we localise at Translate.org.za.
While I agree on the need for terminology I think in many cases doing this first would not be productive. I’d rather see people working with a glossary that is product specific. That way their work is directly related to the task at hand.
Once the language has localised a number of products then it might make sense to align terminology for consistency. But doing it first is demotivating especially in languages with no terminology.
If you look at http://pootle.locamotion.org we’ve created domain specific terminology lists for each project. If you look carefully they are widely different.
You can also see that we host the older GNOME terminology and I’ve also worked on the old OpenOffice.org terminology list. Both of which are unmaintained, which kourge@ highlighted as a more serious problem, but also they are too big and too unrelated to the actual needs of the translation task.
So my suggestion, work from domain specific glossaries. In time try to eliminate inconsistencies and standardise. But don’t make that your first task in the belief that it will get more translation done.
FUEL (Frequently Used Entries for Localization) aims at solving the Problem of Inconsistency and Lack of standardization in Computer,Software Translation across the platform for all Indic Languages. It will try to provide a standardized and consistent look of computer for a language computer users.
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