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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    =?UTF-8?Q?The_Croatian_translation_team?=
From:       "Bojan Kopitar" <cp.tar.bz2 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2008-08-04 14:52:36
Message-ID: 45d766810808040752n1c71ae8dla5d118efd137d058 () mail ! gmail ! com
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Hi.

I was referred to this address by Nicolas Ternisien; he told me you
might be able to assist me with the problem I am about to outline.

Well, I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Bojan
Kopitar, and less than two weeks ago I volunteered to help translate
KDE to Croatian. At the moment I applied, the team's web page showed
last activity had been in June or July 2006.
I was rather glad I would be able to help; I am a top student and a
rather competent translator, albeit without much experience aside from
college and some volunteer work (though I should be able to get
reccomendations). I am currently writing my graduation thesis on the
subject of controlled languages and their utilization in user
interface translation, and I was hoping I could connect my thesis and
the KDE translation project.
Some of my colleagues and friends were also willing to help with the
process — three other translators (two with no previous experience
with Linux) and one programmer with high compentence in both English
and Croatian as well as extensive experience with Linux.

The problem arose when I dared criticise the current Croatian team's
coordinator's work, especially some calques — he took it personally
and the disagreement blew out of proportion.
On Thursday, after we had met in person, where I tried to sort things
out, he finally deleted my account.

Since he is the only coordinator and the only active team member, I
have no-one to appeal to — apart from you, apparently.
I am well aware I have nothing to show for myself as of yet; I have no
commits to the server, since I was planning to do a corpus analysis of
all the messages in the trunk, then design both the terminology and
the grammar to be used — only then would we have started translating,
thus gaining maximum consistency.
All I can say is that I do have a vested interest in doing a good job
— tying it to my graduation thesis means that I have to do it well in
order to do my thesis properly. That also means that, if for some
unlikely reason I had to stop contributing, very detailed
specifications would remain for anyone to pick up. However, my
ultimate plan was to see if my university (Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Univerity of Zagreb) would be willing and able to
host the project, thus ensuring some (knowing the Croatian government,
little or no) funding and a steady reserve of translators — in every
generation of students there would be several willing to help with the
project.

However, all this has been stopped by the current coordinator and I do
not know how to proceed.
As for my thesis, I can always find another project that would take me
and my team in; the Open Source world is wide enough for all of us. I
do remain concerned for the translation of KDE, though — it is one of
the best and biggest projects, and it would be a shame if only one
translator had to do it all, as he is bound to fail.

Any help in resolving this matter would be greatly appreciated.
In order to sidestep any further conflicts, perhaps creating an
alternative Croatian team would be easiest, although I am well aware
of… _political_ complications that might ensue.
If you have any other ideas, I would be glad to hear them. The only
thing that will not work, I'm afraid, is reconciling the differences
between me and the current coordinator; that I have already tried and
failed.

Best regards,
Bojan Kopitar

-- 
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