[Serbiangnome-lista] Serbian (sr) language translation team: maintainer unresponsive

[Danilo Segan]

There are a few problems with the Serbian translation process for GNOME 
2 desktop & development environment.

First is a completely absurd code assignment. First, code "sr" (ISO code 
for Serbian language) is used for Latin transcription of default Serbian 
cyrillic alphabet, and "sp" (this is not ISO code, and has nothing to do 
with the language) is used for cyrillic (which ought to be default "sr").

Though, if we follow the assignment from GNU libc, then "sr_YU" is used 
for latin, and "address@hidden" is used for cyrillic. There are some 
reasons which would justify this, but this is not the topic for this list.

But, just a suggestion: I believe that now removed ISO code of "sh" 
(formerly Serbo-Croatian, now to distinct languages of "sr" and "hr") 
should be more appropriate for latin transcription, and there's a far 
better chance of it never getting assigned by ISO, because it was 
already in use.

So, the suggested resolution should be: "sr" for Serbian language (which 
means also cyrillic alphabet), and "sh" for latin transcription.


Next, far greater problem is the bad communication and coordination 
current maintainer of Serbian translation provides. He has had taken 
over the duty already for a greater part of the year, but the results 
are hardly encouraging. I have repeatedly asked for some instructions on 
conducting translation, but have neve received anything but words that 
"preparations are in progress". Several others have had simiral experiences.

A month or so ago, the maintainer Tomislav Jovanović has started a web 
page at Savannah, and a corresponding mailing list. Seems encouraging, 
except that the only three messages sent to the list were by those 
asking how to contribute, without adequate answer. For the sake of 
"political correctness", I am also cc-ing this message to this list, and 
please keep it that way, so Tomislav might answer if he finds it 
appropriate.

In the meantime, I have made some translations of the GNOME desktop and 
developer platform which are far more finished than what is provided. It 
took me a mere week or so of active work to finish them, and though they 
are far from perfect, I think that Tomislav is doing a really bad job. 
Many have showed interest and enthusiasm, but they could not do any work 
because of the constant delays.

Other than that, Tomislav may be busy with maintaining Mandrake.co.yu, 
and many other things, but I don't accept that as an excuse. At the 
moment, I believe anyone else would conduct a much better job. At the 
moment, because of the lack of better solution, I'd like to take the 
role of maintainer over, unless someone comes forward with a better 
proposal.

Of course, I'll try again to establish private communication with 
Tomislav, and will also ask for his approval to the job. Currently, 
keeping up my translation current and useful is a real pain (CVS 
updates, intltool-update and all the other stuff, which makes it hard 
for many to have translated .desktop and .glade files — especially those 
using binary distributions).

The best argument I can make for myself is the translation I've made 
available at http://www.kvota.net/prevod/


Cheers,
Daneelo Shegun