• Response to a Swahili localization enthusiast

    July 2nd, 2009 by seth bindernagel with 11 comments »

    Those who read this blog may remember that we are trying to finalize a version of Firefox in Swahili.  As it happens now and again, we have two groups who have completed translations at nearly the same time.  The l10n-drivers team is now trying to find the most judicious solution to the problem: determining fairly which translation is best and shipping that.  Amazingly, the differences between the the strings for the two localizations number in the thousands, and properly evaluating the discrepancies is a sizable undertaking for us to find the better version of the two.  If you’d like to see the existing diff, comment here and we’ll send it your way.  Now that we have a finalized Firefox 3.5, I’ve asked each team leader to update the strings in their language pack for final evaluation and we’ll prepare the final diff.

    Sadly, amidst all we have done to ship Firefox to seventy-five locales, it was frustrating to read a blog post from one person suggesting that Mozilla’s l10n-drivers team is playing politics when it comes to shipping the Swahili version.  If it needs to be made explicitly clear, we are in the business of shipping excellent localized software to as many locales as possible.  If our team allowed politics to disrupt prudent judgment, I am not sure we would scale at all.

    In his post, huarya writes, “The Mozilla people want to play nice with everyone instead of giving priority to the team that has actually showed results, real result!”.  I responded extensively in the comment thread, an d here is a copy of my lengthy response for those who care to read it:

    huayra:  I’m not sure if we have ever spoken personally, so it seems a bit careless to suggest that we are playing politics.  If we have spoken via email or IRC, then my apologies.  You can find me on irc.mozilla.org, nick: sethb.

    We ship Firefox now in 75 locales.  We are not in the business of playing games.  It’s about scaling our localization communities in the most sustainable way possible AND providing an excellent finished product.

    But, as you can see through the comments in this post, you’ve planted the seed that our team at Mozilla is doing something dubious.  We are not and that’s irresponsible on your part since you do not mention the full story in your post.  Exactly what do you mean by “The Mozilla people want to play nice with everyone instead of giving priority to the team that has actually showed results, real result!”?

    Here are the facts and consider rewriting your post:

    We do have two language packs from the two teams with thousands of differences.  With those two language packs, my team prepared a presentation of grammatical and translation differences between the two versions and reached out to many different linguistic professors who have expertise in East African Language Studies.  One was eager to help and we are trying to get a final evaluation from him since he wants to get sw-TZ users a version of Firefox.  Another academic contact requested tens of thousands of dollars to do the evaluation and we cannot fund that since no other locale has been afforded any funding to help settle disputes.  A final academic contact did a rough evaluation, said that both translations contained many errors, he wouldn’t be comfortable with either, and would need to charge Mozilla a fee for him to do the thorough evaluation.  These responses come from department heads at leading universities.

    Playing politics would be something less prudent.

    Please also keep in mind that we have several things going on right now, not the least of which is shipping Firefox to 75 locales to our 300+ million users who want updates to Firefox 3.5.  In addition, we are actively working with many other new locales who want to participate.  Yes, sw-TZ has been trying to localize Firefox for many years now.  But, we are responding to requests from all over the world and do our best to manage it all and have done fairly well since we have scaled to 75 localizations.  Most importantly, we want our end users to have something that is an excellent finished product.

    sw-TZ is unique because we have two translations asking to be the official one.  We are seeking the most judicious result as possible because surely one team will be quite disappointed if their translation is not chosen.  The team at Mozilla is the group who deals with the aftermath of that decision.  And, not making a wise decision would only complicate things.

    I’d ask for your patience and understanding as we come to a resolution. And, please minimize the flaming when you don’t have all the facts. Not sure how that helps.