By drupalshrek on

What are the plans to open Drupal.org up to translation?

For example, I have people interested in Drupal in Thailand, but they speak no English. Imagine trying to do Drupal if Drupal.org was only in Thai and you will begin to understand the problem. They are therefore almost totally unable to start with Drupal using Drupal.org. If Drupal.org could be opened up to translation, the Thai (French/Chinese/Spanish/...) community could do the translation.

Dries sees the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NN5EM4CYVE#t=270

Anyone know what the plans are?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

jgjwolf’s picture

jgjwolf commented

It looks like there is some work being done for translating the Drupal projects and Drupal Core so hopefully that will bleed over into drupal.org.

Translating Drupal Core
https://localize.drupal.org/

Status for all languages and projects
https://localize.drupal.org/translate/languages

drupalshrek’s picture

drupalshrek commented

Thanks Jackie, but that's not the same thing. The two links you give, as I understand them, are about translating Drupal core (i.e. the main part of the Drupal software) and about the Drupal projects (e.g. the Views module, the Rules module etc.).

What I'm interested in is seeing something like:

Clearly it doesn't exist at the moment, but I'm trying to find out if anybody is trying to make it happen.

drupalshrek

jaypan’s picture

jaypan
Location Victoria, BC
commented

Localizing Drupal.org would be a huge undertaking, as DO is very customized with special server configurations and more. In order to provide other language instances of DO, it would require someone who understands that language on the Infrastructure team.

There are country-specific Drupal sites, that are not copies of Drupal.org, but are used for Drupal communities in said countries. For example:

http://www.drupal.de/
http://www.drupal.fr/

Your best bet would be to create a Thailand specific Drupal community for said discussions there. The other option you have is creating a Thailand group on groups.drupal.org. We have two in Japan, one for English and one for Japanese. There is actually a Drupal Japan site as well, but it is horrible, and the person who maintains it has never tried to be community oriented, and will not share administration with anyone. So it's essentially a dead site. I won't even post a link, as I don't want to boost his SEO. There has been talk by Dries about opening up a lawsuit against him based on the Drupal trademark, in order to recover the domain name and start a proper community.

Contact me to contract me for D7 -> D10/11 migrations.
Or anything really. I'm friendly, and open to work or conversation.
drupalshrek’s picture

drupalshrek commented

Thanks Jaypan for the input.

I'm sure you're right that DO is very customised with special server configurations and more. However, I don't think it's true that:

In order to provide other language instances of DO, it would require someone who understands that language on the Infrastructure team.

I think it rather requires 2 things:

  1. a burning desire to make it happen
  2. a large amount of skill to figure out how technically to do it

I can set up a multi-lingual Drupal site in as many languages as I want, with a page where the translation of the nodes is done into each of the languages. As the person setting up the site, I do not need to understand all the languages! I'm sure, for example, that the Wikipedia infrastructure team don't speak 288 languages (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias).

I have the impression that currently there is not enough desire from enough people in the right places to make it happen. If there was, the 2nd obstacle would be overcome.

drupalshrek

drupalshrek’s picture

drupalshrek commented

I will write to the D.o Content Working Group to try and see where this is on the official radar, and how to make sure it happens.

drupalshrek

gdemet’s picture

gdemet
he/him
Primary language English
Location Chicago, USA
commented

Hi there! drupalshrek asked me to comment on this thread as the chair of the Content Working Group. We have certainly discussed the idea of having some Drupal.org content available in languages other than English; the big question of course is exactly what content would be translated, and how would it be treated on the site.

We are currently in the process of selecting a consultant to help advise the Drupal Association on high level content strategy for Drupal.org, and it would not surprise me if this was one of the topics that gets explored as part of that engagement.

drupalshrek’s picture

drupalshrek commented

Thank you gdemet for your quick answer.

Please push the consultant to explore this! It's a vital subject for the rest of the world. It should at least be a subject to be considered. Please put yourself in the shoes of the rest of the world. Imagine that Drupal.org was only in French (or German, or Chinese, or Thai, ...), and then think how much a high-level content strategy that doesn't consider putting at least some of Drupal.org in English is worth to you.

drupalshrek

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
he/him
Primary language English
commented

In general, if things get done in Drupal they tend to happen in the issue queue. This is the item where this is being discussed as far as I know https://www.drupal.org/node/1474888