discuss: Re: [Fwd: Re: LSM in Bordeaux]
Subject:
Re: [Fwd: Re: LSM in Bordeaux]
From:
"s. keeling" ####@####.####
Date:
14 Jul 2004 03:33:14 -0000
Message-Id: <20040714032731.GB4740@infidel.spots.ab.ca>
Incoming from ####@####.####
> > What does TLDP want out of this? More and better documentation,
> > better disseminated, I would presume.
>
> + not affected by the language barrier.
You're hand-waving away a basic fact of life. We are affected by the
language barrier. I wish I had fifteen languages under my belt, but I
don't. I imagine that's a pretty common circumstance.
The trick is to figure out some way to manage that fact. traduc.org
have come up with an approach that they think is workable. They
translate TLDP into French. I think that's laudable.
This doesn't have to be a one-way street. Imagine some brilliant
French author pops up and says he's written the Whiz-Bang-HOWTO of the
week. How am I going to read it? Likely by a translation by
traduc.org into English. Now there's a problem: how do we apply TLDP
Writer's Guide policy to a document we're receiving from traduc.org?
Should we make an exception? Should we re-write from the translation?
Should we insist traduc.org applies our policies?
That's just two languages down. How is someone who only knows
Romanian going to read it? How do we get it from French to Romanian?
> > What do the various national organizations want out of this? If the
> > French/German/Other national orgs are simply translators, then they're
> > downstream of TLDP, enhancing the dissemination of TLDP docs
> > (presumably a good thing).
>
> Not a good thing IMHO. I believe we should all be on the same level
> because a documentation not available in the language the user want is not
> helpful.
I think you're presuming a lot. TLDP _manages_ now. We do get out good
documentation. At the same time, everyone accepts that a lot of stuff
doesn't yet get done, and everyone knows of a hundred things that need
to get done. How are we going to scale up to the cathedral if we
haven't yet got basic TLDP functionality worked out?
> Moreover, other languages can also write good documentation from scratch.
> Why couldn't we translate it back in english? Why should everybody be
> obliged to write in english in the first place?
As I said, it doesn't have to be, nor should it be, a one-way street.
If they can translate one way, they can translate the other.
Concentrate on what we have to gain through leveraging each's
abilities.
> The cathedral approach could simplificate this.
The cathedral approach is expensive. Exxon-Mobil makes a lot of money
through economies of scale. They're so huge, the cost of waste can be
spread out over vast areas of the organization.
Smaller organizations can't afford that kind of an operation.
Non-profits who try to work that way are close to criminal. Smaller
organizations need to work smarter.
> And we could do even more if such national organizations could figure out
> a way to work altogether. We shouldn't be restricted by nationalities.
We are restricted; fact of life. Learn to work with it.
> See above with some questions I was asked and the answers involving
> various websites. The good answer should always be "tldp.org, click on the
I agree. However, that's just the public face of TLDP. We're trying
to figure out the back end of that, so we can offer that integrated
public face.
> The goal is not just to be happy of what we have today, but find ways to
> improve it. And out of the many things we should do, taking care of the
> other language should among the first priorities along with simplicity.
True, but how that's done is the question.
For instance, we could mandate from on high that all documentation
must be immediately translated into Esperanto, from which any national
language translation will be made. Does that make any sense? Not if
you want to get out a lot of documentation.
> It's time to think bigger.
It's time to think sneakier. :-)
P. S. Very, very sorry if I've futzed up the addressing on this. I
just hit (list) reply, not knowing if all of you are subscribed
to the discuss list. I've since gone back and replicated the
addressing in my original post in this thread.
--
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling
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