Announcements of new sympa release

[David Verdin <>]

We recruit, today... :-)

As you may or may not know, Sympa is translated in around 12 languages 
so far. Actually, a total of 28 translations are on their way, but we 
only distribute those for which a significant amount of work has been 
produced.
Anybody can contribute to the Sympa translation. You can translate the 
whole Sympa or just a bit of it.

All the translations can be handled through our pootle server: 
http://pootle.sympa.org/
Any translation performed on the pootle interface will be (nightly) 
integrated in our demo server each day. This way, you can see how your 
work fit in Sympa the day after you did it.
Check http://demo.sympa.org/sympa to see your translations in action. 
You can create your own list on this server to test the Sympa features.

As soon as a language has around half of the character strings 
translated, we will integrate it into the Sympa distribution.

Finally, as a Sympa translator, you gain the right for a Sympa T-shirt. 
so contact us and we'll send you one (we should make some brand new soon).

Any details about the Sympa internationalisation process are detailed 
there: https://www.sympa.org/wiki/translating_sympa

That's it for the essential informations. Below are some details for 
those of you who used our pootle server previously. We changed some 
things to make it more user firendly.

Until recently, when you wanted to translate Sympa into your language, 
you had several problems :
1- the strings to translate were not ordered in a logical way : you had 
to translate them without being sure of their context;
2- you could translate the user interface (web and mail), but the 
biggest part of the online help was not available for translation;
3- you were not sure your efforts would be recognized, as only the name 
of the last translator was saved. If somebody worked after you on the 
same translation, your name was dumped into the limbo.
4- the web interface was far from intuitive.

That's why we made several improvement to our translation system, among 
which:
1- the strings are now ordered in the same order as they appear in 
Sympa. We also present first the main pages of the web interface, then 
the rest of the user interface, and finally the logs and system 
messages. This allows to translate first the strings that will be read 
by the largest number of users;
2- we created a translation project for the Sympa online help; speaking 
of which: if you made some translation of this onlinne help previously 
and want to share it, please send us your work, we'll do our best to 
introduce it into pootle;
3- We activated a subversion repository for the translation. Once you're 
finished translating (even one single string!) you can submit your work 
to this repository. Your login will be remembered;
4- Nothing about the web interface ergonomy, unfortunately. We have 
enough to do with Sympa. ;-)


Sympa needs you... to teach it your language! :-)

--
David Verdin
Comité réseau des universités