Re: [Duplicity-talk] Version 0.5.04 Released

[Michael Terry]

On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Dan Muresan <address@hidden> wrote:
> Never mind the messages, how are they going to read the man page? Or the
> Duplicity web page? How are they going to communicate on the mailing
> list when their backup fails?

Man pages can be translated too, I believe.  Though it isn't hooked up
to be right now.


>> Imagine if Ken was Japanese, and duplicity was Japanese-only.  Would
>> you still be so hard on translations?
>
> Translations or not, I doubt that someone who doesn't understand the
> Duplicity homepage will go for duplicity based solely on command-line
> interaction in their native language. Somebody needs to write a blog
> entry or a tutorial in a that language in the first place.

I agree.  People have probably already written many blog entries about
duplicity in other languages.  But ultimately, all they can do is say
"go download this software here, it works great for me."  Then the
user gets the software and unless they speak English, they can't do
anything.  Translating the software itself is, as you say, only one
part of the solution.  But it's a necessary one.


> In summary, I'm sorry to say I doubt translations will make much of a
> difference (except in expended effort, portability problems, enlarged
> footprint etc as we are currently witnessing)

I think you're overstating the problem.  I've maintained dinky little
apps that had very small audiences, and yet a surprising number of
translations came in from users that were happy with it, not to
mention the translation services that exist for open source software.
I think you'd be surprised.  But we have to build it before they can
come.

-mt