By: Marc Laan
Dutch translator for the Mageia Wiki
To my surprise, I’ve been a translator for Mageia for some time now. And guess what: it’s fun work. I translate English articles on the website https://wiki.mageia.org/en/ into my own language, Dutch.
It’s not only enjoyable. I also learn in a playful way how Mageia works . For example, since translating an article about USB memories, I can now use these sticks to boot Mageia on the go from another computer.
How did I get into this translation work? In a way I had not expected. I’ve been using Mageia since its predecessors Mandrake and Mandriva. Over the years, I have always valued the simplicity with which I, as a computer novice, can operate this Linux operating system.
When the Mageia servers went down for days last year, it really touched my heart. I asked on the website whether I could make a financial contribution to modernize the server park. I got a remarkable answer from Marja van Waes, who has been active for years as a leader and jack-of-all-trades for this non-profit organization: “I would rather you put your energy into translating Wiki documents.”
My first attempts were rather clumsy, but I got a lot of help from Marja and other volunteers. They taught me how to create the translations on the wiki website, from behind my pc at home. Once I got the hang of it, it became a piece of cake.
Of course, I secretly use online translation engines, to improve my own rough translation versions. However, I have learned that you have to check their output thoroughly; sometimes they provide utter nonsense.
Up until now, I have only been involved in translating wiki documents. I don’t have any experience with translating the help texts in the Mageia programs. All in good time, I’m just a simple Mageia user.
In the meantime, I’ve noticed that the wiki mainly contains documents in French, English, German and Portuguese. Articles in important language areas such as Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Bengali, Italian or the Scandinavian countries are scarce.
In dozens of countries, there are thousands of Mageia users who have to do without wiki documentation in their own language. I hope that will change in the future. Fortunately, help texts in software packages as the Classical Mageia Installer and the Mageia Control Center (MCC) are available in more than 25 languages. As a comparison: LibreOffice supports 71 languages and Firefox even comes with 94.
Something else strikes me: there are few women in the ranks of wiki translators. This is remarkable, because I know that in the past women have played an important role in Mageia, for example as team leaders for building packages, in the Atelier team that does the design and marketing, in the Documentation team, and in the Bugsquad, the digital detectives who track down errors in the software.
Long story short: I hope for more translators for the wiki articles pitch in, especially in languages that are currently missing. And it would be nice to see more women in our translation team. It’s certainly not an old-boys club!
Technical knowledge isn’t needed for this work, in my experience. And it’s enjoyable volunteer work, which costs me at most a few hours per translation -sometimes more, other times less.
Do you think you are up for it? Please contact the translation team (Internationalisation Team):
- Yuri Chornoivan – yurchor AT ukr DOT net
- Filip Komar – filip AT mageia DOT org
The above blog text is the final version; it replaces an earlier draft, that was published by accident. The first responses were reactions to the draft.
