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Mayan Inspiration
When I was at the Mozilla Camp in Chile, I met Julián Ceballos, the team leader from Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula who is working on localizing Firefox in Mayan. Yesterday, he wrote me, saying,
“In Mozcamp i said, mozilla is no helping just to translate firefox to mayan, mozilla is helping to rescue and make strong the mayan language. Well, i’ll send it and we’ll be in contact.” [sic]
Aw, shucks. That just makes me happy.
Maybe I have delusions of grandeur as I sit here and sip my Kool-Aid, but I think there is something critical to language preservation happening in the Mozilla localization project for cultural anthropologist and linguists to study. I’ve discussed this topic with other Mozillans who are interested like Tiffney Mortensen, Chofmann, Staś, John Lilly, Søren Skrøder (Mozilla Denmark), and Kadir Topal (Mozilla Germany). Every time we ship a new version, even for some of the most niche locales, Mozilla helps just a little bit to preserve the culture of language and communication. Imagine how unique an experience it becomes for a total newcomer to browse the web with an application whose user interface is both translated and customized for local use. That can be very powerful and is why we want Mozilla locale count to continue to grow.
To see a little more about what our Mayan friends are doing, check out these links:
- Mayan Firefox language pack
- Screen shot of Mayan Firefox
- Mozilla México en Mérida, Yucatán
- Local press
Do you know of a new localization effort? I will pay chocolate dipped cake donuts for every referral that becomes a localization.
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More on Firefox in the Philippines
While we were in the Philippines, Gen and I learned quite a bit about the local Internet landscape there. I thought I would share some more information that I picked up from the trip.
- Population is 92 million, online population is between 20-24 million
- English is one of the official languages of the Philippines. Tagalog is spoken by roughly 22 million people in and around Manila. Cebuano is another language spoken by nearly 20 million Filipinos south of the Luzon region (where Manila is located).
- Depending on what factor we use as a multiplier for our blocklist/AUS ping data, we can estimate that between 3 and 6 million Filipinos are using Firefox. That is a rough guess, but it places Firefox market share at a low-end of 12.5% and a high-end of 30%
- Most people we spoke to browse the Web in English (Firefox US version), but some did suggest that a local version would have appeal.
- Even further debate arose on whether a Tagalog version would have traction, with an audience of bloggers at Wordcamp responding collectively that it might not.
That latter point does not rule out Mozilla shipping a local version of Firefox. But, like every other localization, if we were to ship something localized to the Philippines, it will be because a local community member(s) responds to my call to action and decides to help us complete the body of work.
Obviously, Mozilla Firefox is taking off in the the Philippines, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see if the nascent community stepped forward with an offer to localize Firefox.
Finally, take a look at some stats about Firefox in the Philippines. (All numbers are based on our blocklist data.)
Growth of blocklist pings over one year
The Philippines is #4 on the list
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Presentation at WordCamp Philippines
Gen and I attended WordCamp Philippines and I presented today to the audience of about 100-150 people. The purpose of our visit and participation was straightforward:
- To gain further insight into the landscapeof the Web and Internet in the Philippines;
- To assess whether or not a localized version is something our community here mightpursue;
- To meet our community of campus reps and others.
It’s been a steamy (as in the humidity), but amazingly kind reception here and we booked our schedules full with meetings and events. That’s all Gen’s amazing work.
As for my WordCamp chat, here is my presentation. I started by taking the audience through our open web demos (video, canvas, svg, css, js etc. thank you Paul Rouget…), and then honed in on describing our Mozilla community, using localization as an example of how we are a global community of passionate contributors working to promote Mozilla’s mission.
My call to action was two-fold: the blogging community can help promote the Open Web through their blogs, AND, if people feel empowered to do so, let’s start a localization for Filipino users.
Feedback from these local bloggers was energetic, questions were poignant, and the message was embraced. My prediction, a Mozilla community here is going to take off if we continue to nurture, empower, and participate.
I am trying to embed the presentation here, based on some code that Gen shared with me, but it looks like it is not working.
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Firefox Mongolian Direct Outreach
Over the past couple Firefox releases, the Mozilla community has proudly shipped a Mongolian localization of Firefox. And, based on the blocklist pings that Firefox makes everyday, we can estimtate that we have between 10,000 and 20,000 active daily users in that locale. That’s a nice accomplishment by the Mongolian community!
However, as we ramp up our efforts to localize Firefox 3.6, and a mobile Firefox, we have been reaching out to our “mn” community leader, Natsagdorj (Nagi) Shagdar, but have had no response to the emails we have sent. I guess it’s an inevitability to have some turnover when a 100% volunteer community rallies together to ship Firefox in over 70 languages. Building sustainable communities is critical to our ongoing success and something we take very seriously.
Therefore, this is an open blog post to reconnect with our Mongolian team in order to make sure everything is OK and receive a status update on the work/team going forward. It would be terrific to receive an email from Nagi or others to let me know how to proceed with work on the mn locale.
This post serves a secondary purpose because we also would like to invite any others interested in joining the Mozilla Mongolian community to contact us. We are looking for community members to help take up some of the localization effort so we don’t lose all that we have accomplished with the mn version. Plus, we don’t want to let down thousands of our Mongolian users who will be looking for the latest and greatest when Firefox 3.6 comes out.
If you have interest in joining the community or know of anyone who might help in some capacity (even with simple referrals), then contact me through the comment section of this blog. We have a robust set of community members and tools that makes localization easy and fun.
As a matter of fact, we are welcoming all newcomers, so just ping me. Thanks, everyone!
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How do we scale the Mozilla localization community?
Between the release of Firefox 3 and the upcoming release of Firefox 3.5, Mozilla will add twenty-six new localizations to the Firefox’s list of localized versions. It’s likely that we will ship Firefox in seventy-four locales, not including the en-US version. What does it take to scale our community and increase our locale count by over fifty-four percent?
It turns out that many who learn about our growth often ask if we can articulate any of the magic behind this scale. It’s not really magical, and it’s pretty straight forward. In fact, I’ve been meaning to write something on my blog about our process to describe the many things that make this possible. Coincidentally, Greg Bell, who helps run the website Open Logic, learned of our growth and asked me if I’d answer this very question in a post for his site. This seemed like the best opportunity since Greg provided a deadline that would force me finally to write it. He and his staff titled the article Go Local, Be Global: Scaling the Mozilla Localization Community and they wrote a very nice introduction about Mozilla. I hope you find time to read it.
Of course, it’s quite easy to write a piece like this when we have a remarkable community of contributors. Special thanks has to go out to the l10n community and l10n-drivers team who have been building for years the foundation that has made this scale possible. Most of all, Axel Hecht and Pascal Chevrel have been the two Mozilla employees most responsible for our global growth. Hats of to them.
Finally, many thanks to Greg for offering me the opportunity to write. He caught me at the height of our Firefox 3.5 release work, so it took me a few more weeks than expected to write it. Luckily, he let me slip my deadline twice until I finally got this together.
community website
