2011Q4 Grant Proposal: Turkish Localization of the 5.14.1 Perl Documentation
Sun, 18-Dec-2011 by
Alberto Simões
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<dl>
<dt><strong>Name:</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>Allyson Whitney-Caputo</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong>Email:</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p></p>
</dd>
<dt><strong>Amount Requested:</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p>USD10,000</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<p>
</p>
<h2>Synopsis</h2>
<p>Perl is used by companies and taught in computer science classes around the world, but the most up-to-date Perl documentation is only readily available in English. There have been attempts over the years to translate Perl's documentation into other languages, but all have been abandoned. The proposed grant would support the complete Turkish localization of this documentation.</p>
<p>
<h2>Benefits to the Perl Community</h2>
<p>This project would open the Perl community to Turkish developers and give them access to Perl documentation more comfortably in their native language. It would also finally complete a project abandoned in 2002 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/trperl/).</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2>Deliverables</h2>
<p>1. A complete and accurate translation of the Perl 5.14.1 documentation in Turkish.</p>
<p>This includes fitting the new content into the same format, maintaining UTF8 compliance, and matching the HTML content with the PDF content.</p>
<p>2. Weekly blog posts to provide status updates, as well as working excerpts of completed localized documents in draft form.</p>
<p>The goal of this is to get feedback on the localization's accuracy from anyone willing to contribute, and to submit current parts of the translation for review and comments from the Turkish Perl community.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2>Project Details</h2>
<p>The systematic translation of the Perl documentation's content, as presented in the tar.gz available on perldoc.perl.org, will take the longest time. The translation, for ease of organization, will begin with a2p.html and conclude with xsubpp.html, unless feedback from the community indicates a preferred order or certain documents requiring more immediate attention. Once the content has been translated, it will be adapted to HTML and PDF format in accordance with the pre-existing documentation in a manner that both accurately preserves the Turkish characters and doesn't break anything.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2>Project Schedule</h2>
<p>Working full-time at 40 hours per week, this project will take approximately five months to complete.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2>Bio</h2>
<p>I recently graduated Florida State University with a BA in Middle Eastern culture and linguistics. I have three years experience with both written and spoken Turkish and have studied at Koç University in Istanbul. In addition to my studies at FSU, I have done freelance translation work, including actively developing a Turkish localization for the upcoming release of BZFlag 3.0, extracurricular tutoring for Turkish students desiring increased proficiency in English, and acting as a teaching assistant to American students in an elementary Turkish class. I also am proficient in French and Arabic.</p>
#gp2011q4
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Comments (4)
Localizing the docs is great, but $10k is way more than a typical grant. I'd much rather see that money spent on the core maint fund.
The other issue with translation is whether the translator has any plans to maintain the docs after the initial translation. It seems like translations can get out of date very quickly.
Thanks for pointing this up, Dave. Accordingly with Grant Committee rule of operation, this grant cannot be funded. Will keep this post here, but will warn the author.
Independent of cost and affordability, the biggest problem I see with any translation is that the original language version is not static.
However useful the translation when initially made, without a plan for how to keep it up to date (and necessary resources to implement same), there's only one guarantee - it's going to become increasingly inaccurate, eventually to the point of being more harm than good.
A grant application that addresses the problem of keeping current would be interesting. A grant application that ignores this problem is not.
I would say that maintaining the document would not be hard at all, because once a translator provides the initial translation using a professional CAT tool and has a TM (translation memory) for the initial document, it is simply a matter of running any updated version of the document through that TM. Parts that have been updated are simply modified/translated accordingly and added to the TM.
