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Re: Emacs localization (Re: Why emacs have not native language menu)


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: Emacs localization (Re: Why emacs have not native language menu)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:30:22 -0400

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <fusion@mx6.tiki.ne.jp>
> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:10:13 +0900
> 
> 
> On 24 juil. 07, at 20:35, Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:
> 
> > Emacs is very old and was never designed for localization.  Of course,
> > localization support can be added in principle, but it's probably not
> > a small job.  Neither is it medium sized, if you get my drift.
> 
> Of course. But there is a tutorial, there are manuals there is a  
> basic core GUI. That makes a set of a relatively limited scope, and  
> as far as I know most of the "external" data already has translation.

Emacs already displays the tutorial in the locale's language; there
are 20 translations of the tutorial to languages other than English
that come with Emacs 22.x distributions.  If translators volunteer to
translate the user manual (a formidable job, if you ask me, since the
manual is HUGE), there should be no problem at all to display a
localized manual, too.

IOW, the difficulties are not in the external docs, they are in the
internal doc strings, menus, tooltips, and various features that use
those internal documentation resources for their implementation.

> So I think the actual scope of the work is actually much smaller than  
> most people imagine.

You are wrong thinking that.  I will try to explain why in a separate
message.

But you have an excellent opportunity to prove that you are right and
others are wrong: step forward and volunteer to do some part of this
job.  Thanks in advance.

> > Did I hear you volunteer?  Good luck!
> 
> I would if a reasonably simple system exist. I am a translator by  
> trade, not a coder.

Then we are out of luck, for the time being, because the most
important part of the job is to design and implement the
infrastructure required for making Emacs localization possible.

However, you can still volunteer to translate the manual.  That
doesn't need almost any infrastructure changes, so as soon as a single
translation exists, the localized manuals can be made available to
users.




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