Hi


>Vitor,
>
>see my comments inline.
>
>On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 17:23 +0000, Vitor Domingos wrote:
>> I'll have to heavily disagree on this.
>> 
>> English could not have a Native Lang project, it's our working basis
>> language. All projects belong to this already created english NL and
>> it doesnt need to be created all over again. We're just duplicating
>> work, lists, members and leaders.

I tend to agree with Vitor here but am open to persuasion to the
contrary.  Put another way, what would be the raison d'Ãtre of EN NLC?
And, how would it in practice ensure that does not exploit its
privilege?  Ryan, in a private post, had asked me to see if i could
sketch it out.  At the moment, I can't think of a compelling reason for
it.  That doesn't mean it cannot be imagined....
>
>No, certainly not. Remember that we use English between us because
>it's the common language. Hence, the Marketing Project deals (or
>should deal) with issues regarding everybody, not just the english
>native speakers, and so forth for any project. As Louis stressed it,
>if we had lived in the 18th century, we would all speak French, yet,
>there still would have been a need for French native speakers to have
>their own community, outside of the global and technical projects.

But wouldn't that just entrench the French privilege?  What I am
concerned with is, as I stated, that an EN project would, unless sharply
circumscribed, solidify its privilege.  
>> 
>> The localization work is build in OOo and all the other work could
>> be found on the general mailing lists and projects. Actual Marketing
>> project is the English marketing project, which has and defines the
>> global marketing plan for OOo.
>
>well, if this was true, this would be unfair, don't you think? :-)
>Marketing project should not deal with matters only regarding a part
>of our users, but should deal with marketing on a global scale.

How would you envision this process?  Say that there is the PR for 2.0
beta to be written (hint hint) and it's written initially in English.
Okay, it was written by the [EMAIL PROTECTED] group, not part of the EN
project.  So, they don't have to translate it or anything. They do have
to get the word out to the press.  But why does that require a separate
project? The MarCons are not necessarily part of NLC projects, after
all.  They are, last I checked, part of MP.

Nor is marketing the only point of NLC. In fact, it's not even the
primary point. The chief point is "resources and information" and also
"localization."  So, let's turn to resources and information, and guess
what: they are already in English.  We also don't have to worry about
localization.

But let's go back to resources.  There are documents that are written
in, say, Serbian, that ought to be in other languages.  Few native
speakers of English in this project, I daresay, also speak or read
Serbian.  They ought to, of course, but they don't.  So, it's up to
Serbian project to translate them to English. What then is the EN NLC
doing wrt to Documentation?  Or would the Serbian (or French or
German...) speakers be part of the English NLC?


>> 
>> But I understand that England MP plans could be diferent from the
>> USA, and it could all still be done in the actual MP. Maybe we're
>> just talking about having MP divisions, for USA, UK, AUS, etc and
>> not having the need for English NLC.
>
>You forget users support, QA, documentation, etc... This all makes a
>Native-Lang project. And for all this, there is a need to gather
>English native speakers in one community while letting the "central"
>projects deal with general issues at large.

See above. Support? Our users list now is mainly staffed by those who
speak English and caters to mostly English speaking (or writing)
persons, though of course not all are.  It's de facto a support list for
English speakers.  I'm not at all sure that making a special project to
cater to these will appreciably help matters. 

QA? Well, it's pretty automatic, as right now the EN builds are the
"default" builds.  That could change, of course, but it's not likely.

I agree that in the abstract, an EN project seems possible.  My interest
in an EN NLC would be precisely to limit the implicit privilege of
English in the project.  But I am having difficulty imagining how this
would all work in practice.  

To repeat, I think it could work, at least in the abstract, but am not
seeing how, at least in the particulars.  What i am seeing is that it
would be useful to have for example a group, if not a project, in charge
of ensuring that dictionaries, etc., are properly translated to the
variants of English.  But I think it would even in this case make sense
to work with existing projects, than create a new one.

So, I am unpersuaded.  Maybe I'm missing something. What is to be gained
by having an EN NLC?  And, how is the implicit privilege of English to
be limited, should an EN NLC be created? 


Best
Louis








>Regards,
>
>Charles.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> //VD
>> 
>> Ryan Singer wrote on 02/15/2005 06:57 PM:
>> > Native-Lang project: English
>> > Project code:    en
>> > Project level:   Level II
>> > Project lead:    Ryan Singer
>> > Project co-lead: Ian Lynch
>> > 
>> > This is a proposal to start an English Native-Lang Project.  This
NL
>> > project is intended to cover all variations of English. That is, it
is
>> > not specific to either US or British English, or any other variant.
>> > 
>> > The reason to start this project at Level II is that all of the
>> > localisation work is already done for English, allowing the project
to
>> > immediately get started with grass-roots marketing.  For every
other
>> > language, the respective NL project looks after grass roots
marketing
>> > efforts (banners, flyers, handing out CDs, etc) and the global
>> > marketing goals (like the SMP) are left to the marketing project. 
>> > Since the MP operates in English, the English language doesn't have
an
>> > NL project dedicated to this sort of grass roots effort. This
creates
>> > an unusual burden on English-speaking MarCons and results in missed
>> > opportunities in English speaking countries.
>> > 
>> > An English NL project would also help lower the disparity between
>> > projects. Right now the OOo project is roughly divided into
"English"
>> > and "everyone else". An English NL project is a first step towards,
>> > eventually, having all languages on the same level, with English as
a
>> > modular part of the whole, like every other language.
>> 
>
>
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