G11N/Globalization Proposal

Proposal for Fedora globalization initiative

Introduction

One of the objectives of Fedora project is to 'Promote a global perspective by supporting as many languages and geographic locales as possible.' This comes under the broad category of "Building open source software communities"

Fedora has remained the leading distribution from Globalization perspective.

• Most of the widely used i18n technologies were first adopted in Fedora. Eg: IBus.
• Started supporting 22 Indian official languages and many other languages.
• Localization team members not only help translations for Fedora but also work with upstream and follow Fedora philosophy of upstream first.
• Fedora migrated from Transifex and recently started using Zanata as a translation platform.
• Fedora presently supports 323 locales and localized fully in some locales and partially in almost all locales.

Present Scenario

Presently Fedora has four groups working on Globalization activities:

• Internationalization: This group works to enable Fedora to use different languages. Fonts, Rendering, Input methods, Locales and tools like dictionaries and Spell-checkers.
• Localization: This group works to converts GUI and Documentation from English to Native languages. Translating PO files and documentation files.
• Zanata: Translation management framework helps to Localization group for efficient and effective localization. Fedora package maintainers exports .po files to Zanata and localization members help to translate them then package maintainers pulls it back while building packages.
• FLTG (Fedora language testing group): QA of globalization often required regional language specific knowledge. This group help into it. Normally active during test days for Localization.

IRC channels

• #fedora-i18n, #fedora-l10n, #zanata and #fedora-fltg (non-active)

Meeting

• i18n -> bi-weekly meetings.
• l10n -> Meetings not happening from last few years.
• zanata -> We recently decided to use Zanata as a Fedora default translation management
• fltg -> No meetings.

Documentation for Fedora release

• Presently we have documentation category only for Internationalization http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/21/html/Release_Notes/index.html

Test days

• Internationalization and Localization happens differently with focusing on different aspects.

Change proposals

• Planning and change proposals happens differently.

What is proposed

Ultimate goal of these four groups is to provide a seamless language and cultural experience to Fedora products. Proposing globalization initiative with the collaboration of i18n, l10n, Zanata and FLTG.

How it will help?

I18n enables Fedora for languages and later l10n uses this to translate UI into respective language. There is natural synchronization between them.

• I18n works with new products for enabling languages. In next step l10n can use it for localization.
• I18n can make sure, important packages in Fedora are internationalized.
• L10n can propose and test new features for i18n. Predictive text, Fonts, Dictionaries.
• L10n and I18n works with Zanata and make sure things work well from i18n side as well from localization size.

Where to collaborate?

• Understanding present state of Fedora globalization.
• Planning for future Fedora Globalization with the different Workstation, Server and Cloud editions.
• More synchronization during Fedora development cycles.
  • Meetings
  • Change proposals
  • Testing days
  • Documentations
• Organizing FAD targeting specific objective for Globalization.

Additional Workflow

• New IRC for globalization #fedora-g11n
• Monthly meeting for Globalization activities within Fedora.
• Collaborative planning for Fedora releases.
• Working together on Test days, Documentation and FAD's.

Coordinators for Initiative

• Pravin Satpute
• Noriko Mizumoto
• Ani Peter
• Luke Brooker
• Alex Eng
• Patrick Huang
• Ding-Yi Chen