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: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Olli-Antti 
Kivilahti
Sent: March 9, 2012 08:53
To: [email protected]
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

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