[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen localization effort

[Duimovich, George]

Hello Olli-Antti,

Re: translation

It all depends upon how quickly you'll need a full translation, and for which interfaces you may want to assign priority for immediate translation before going live.  Most of us using non-English interfaces have taken a phased approach to translation: doing a few big batches in the early phase then making new contributions with each major release. Of course, each new release brings a fresh batch of strings required for translation from English, but note that the total number of strings can be deceiving. Some strings are repeated in multiple interfaces and a number could possibly be assigned lower priority because they are not as visible in the Staff Client and/or may be found in more specialized interfaces (like the admin tools) where perhaps only one or two of your staff need to work in.

For the essential public display pieces (e.g. web search only), there are not that many strings to translate so your clients could be working in Finnish with only modest investment. Same for the "top level" strings in the Evergreen Staff Client. After that it does become a commitment, not so much for the volume (which is a lot as you go deeper into the interface, error messages, etc.), but more because you'll need to engage translation expertise that also knows "library speak" as well as the technical phrases. 

You also have control over translation strings in between releases, meaning that you can immediately override or add to translations without waiting for community updates / fixes coming in a later release...

Cheers,

George Duimovich
NRCan Library / Bibliothèque de RNCan


-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Olli-Antti Kivilahti
Sent: March 9, 2012 08:53
To: open-ils-dev at list.georgialibraries.org
Subject: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen localization effort

Good day Evergreen mailing list!

I am working on a project to compare Evergreen and Koha, and to chart the challenges facing us if we were to migrate to a Open Source ILS.
Currently I am looking into the matter of localization and internationalization, specifically into the areas that need internationalization, such as changing the address fields or patron information fields to match ones locale. Also I would be interested to hear about the effort of making the Launchpad translation. There are around 9300 localizable Strings and translating them all to Finnish seems to be a daunting task.
Also analysing the risks included in OS is a major concern.
We would love to hear more about your libraries decisions regarding library automation software maintenance.

How long has it usually taken to do all the Launchpad translations?

Seasons greetings from icy Finland!

--
Olli-Antti Kivilahti
Open Library 2013
Library of Joensuu