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Translation activities at Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) The MPP translation team, since 2005 , have been fully devoted to the translation of Free and Open Source Software. This way, it has been contributing in bridging the digital divide caused by the language barrier – English. It was certainly not easy to start with in the beginning without much prior experience and sufficient materials to consult. However, it is a big pleasure to acknowledge that the team has already translated three and half million words in due course of the translation journey from NepaLinux 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, Open CD and till NepaLinux DVD version. With these translations, now most of the software developed and released by MPP have been completely translated into Nepali thus opening doors for less English proficient people to also get access to using these software. Moreover, these software also are being extensively used by FOSS enthusiasts and students ranging from government schools to private schools, colleges and universities. How the translation works are being conducted?
The translation team at MPP has been using translation memory tools for the last 2 and half years for translating Free and OpenSource Software terminologies. The whole activity involves research for suitable software for translation, translating them and verifying and testing the translation. The translation team started with 2-3 translators and one linguist. The team soon grew up into a bigger size comprising 9 translators owing to the huge number of translations that had to be completed within a short span of time. Without prior experience of translation work and ready made conventions made, it, sure was a tough time for the team initially. The only guidelines available was the technical glossary developed by HLCIT through NLIT, which also was not adequate enough to address all the problems faced while translating English computer related terminologies.
Now, the MPP translation team has shaped it's size to five full time members. With the flow of time, the quality of translation is also getting better day by day. Below, we present some statistics on the translation activity accomplished so far.
| S.N. | Modules Name | Files | Strings(messege) | 1 | Gnome | 244 | 102791 | 2 | Opie PDA | 229 | 8363 | 3 | OpenOffice.org with Help files | 227 | 77546 | 4 | Debian Installer | 42 | 5187 | 5 | KDE | 496 | 80033 | 6 | Sea-monkey | 1 | 7000 | 7 | Firefox browser | 1 | 4700 | | 8 | FileZilla FTP Client | 1 | 715 | | 9 | VLC | 1 | 3625 | | 10 | 7-Zip File Compressor | 1 | 450 | | | | | | | | Total | 1243 | 290410 |
Most of the translations have already been uploaded to the upstream so that one can download them from any corner of world at anytime via the Internet.  | Fig: Localized konqueror browser |  | Fig: Localized Kword
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Projects Link and Details
Below, we provide links to different translation activities that have been taking place at MPP.
GNOME
Gnome Environment provides you some kind of flavor that can be felt by the users while using a desktop. It is widespread in the Linux world. It has been already mentioned before that we have been working for the Gnome desktop environment from the very beginning of this project. We, now have completed translations in Gnome 2.14 version, and currently working on 2.20 development version. People currently using NepaLinux can have Gnome desktop environment in the Nepali language. |  |
| | Screenshot of Localized Gnome Desktop Environment. |
GNOME Upstream Status:
The link given below shows the status for Gnome 2.20 translation which is the total translations of Gnome 2.14 accomplished by the Nepali translation team then.
http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/ne/
GNOME Release Schedule:
The release schedule has been set for September 19, 2007 as referred by this page.
http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointNineteen
KDE KDE is another desktop environment which provides users different flavor in terms of graphical perspective and with its somehow different applications and software.
The translated KDE Desktop Environment is available in NepaLinux 2.0 and above versions. |  | Fig. Localized KDE Desktop Environment |
KDE Upstream Status
This page represents the status of Nepali translations for KDE-4 trunk which comes up with the previous version KDE-3.5
http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/trunk-kde4/ne/ KDE Release Schedule
Here you can find the release schedule of KDE-4 trunk which is set for September 23rd, 2007. http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.0_Release_Schedule OpenOffice.org
We have translated and localized OpenOffice suite along with help files.
This suite help users to do all the official tasks with the help of different applications that come with it. Some of the useful applications include Writer, Calc and Impress. Nepali Spell Checking is also incorporated in the suite, which correctly checks and suggests more than 2 million Nepali words. |  | Fig. localized OpenOffice writer:
This link shows you the separate GUI and Help messages translation accomplished on the specified date Dec 6, 2007 for the OpenOffice suite. This is the upstream status of the translation works on Open Office.org 2.2
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Translation_Statistics
Another detailed link reflecting the whole translations status is also provided below:
http://ne.openoffice.org/stats/ The release date of OpenOffice has been scheduled for September 4th, 2007.
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OOoRelease23 BrowsersGiven below is a list of browsers and their respective links reflecting the translation status for Nepali. 1. Seamonkey Seamonkey web browser has been bundled with NepaLinux 2.0 This is a very powerful browser which has all-in-one features. We are yet to get it's link for upstream informations. |  | Fig. Localized SeaMonkey Browser | 2. Firefox There is no links available for the Firefox in the meantime. We will publish as soon as it gets available to us. For your kind information, the translations and testing of Firefox has already been finished at MPP and hopefully people can get it with NepaLinux 3.0 or other recent versions. 3. Konqueror (KDE application)
This application has been integrated with NepaLinux 2.0 KDE CD and in NepaLinux DVD. This is not only the Internet browser but it can also be used to browse the files in the system of from the network. Debian Installer
It has been a big milestone for Nepali localization team to have debian installer localized into the Nepali language. The upstream translation status can be found in the link given below. There are five levels in total for the Debian Installer complete modules. You can find translation status of different levels in different columns by reffering to the ne code specified for the Nepali language.
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/l10n-stats/translation-status.html
Fedora Installer This is also a popular Installer among the Linux systems. So, we have decided to complete the translations for this. The link below provides the information about the minimum requirements to be completed for having own language preferences in the upcoming official release. This also shows the current upstream status for the different languages.
http://i18n.redhat.com/cgi-bin/i18n-status?page=status&branch=HEAD&locale=ne&essential=1 Translation freeze date scheduled by Fedora Project is dated for 25th September 2007.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/Schedule Extras Pidgin is a graphical Chat Messenger through which you can connect to AIM, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!, and other IM networks. It uses GTK+. It was formerly called Gaim Instant Messenger.
http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/TipsForTranslators
This link provides you the upstream status which comes up from the previous version we translated. You will have updated statistics very soon.
http://developer.pidgin.im/l10n/ Among other works, the team also is working on providing translation input for the google page. It is but nice to see more of the web pages coming up translated into Nepali.
Future Plans of the translation team :
1.Gnome 2.20 translations
2. KDE translations and others |
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Translation works 
