Getting entries approved for minority languages

Fri May 16 14:58:30 CDT 2014

Hi Agustin,

nice to bypass the layers of agencies and actually e-meet my employer :)

I am actually one of the proofreaders on your team for Scottish Gaelic
and it has indeed been an important step for us that Microsoft has been
willing to pay for localization into our language.

I have met with my fellow localizer today, who is the person who
provided the original locale data. at the time he provided the original
data, our localizing efforts were still in their infancy. So, with 4
year more of experience under our belts, we plan to extend the locale
data and to do some minor fixes on what had already been submitted -
e.g. making narrow entires more narrow. Also, our terminology took some
time to stabilize.

So, please do take on the changes we are making in the Survey tool; they
are coming from the same people, and we will keep consistency with
anything you send our way in the future :)

16/05/2014 17:20, sgrìobh Agustin Da Fieno Delucchi:
> Hi all,
> 
> I just wanted to provide my feedback on behalf of Microsoft.
> 
> Scottish Gaelic is a language for which Microsoft has been providing support for a good number of years. In doing so, we have engaged with local language institutions. 
> 
> We do have locale data for this language, as well as extensive terminology and translation memories, so we certainly care about this language and locale.
> 
> I am sure that the locale information that Microsoft has will differ much from what the Fòram na Gàidhlig is providing, but we (Microsoft) would prefer that our vetting score is not reduced for this and other locales that we are adding to CLDR v 26.
> 
> Please let me know if you have further questions or comment.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Agustín
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CLDR-Users [mailto:cldr-users-bounces at unicode.org] On Behalf Of Fòram na Gàidhlig
> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:41 PM
> To: cldr-users at unicode.org
> Subject: Re: Getting entries approved for minority languages
> 
>> On 05/15/2014 08:19 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>>> May be it's possible to - adjust the voting threshold according to 
>>> the number of participants
>> I think that's basically what's done on a manual basis such as in the 
>> case of Scottish Gaelic. I don't think it would be done on an 
>> automated basis.
> 
> As long as you have enough man power to do so, manual is the ticket.
> After I asked, I got pointed to this mailing list, and after posting my problem got resolved really fast.
> 
> 
>>> - reduce the vetting score for major companies (like Google, IBM, 
>>> Apple, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft/Nokia, Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla 
>>> Foundation, Launchpad, Wikimedia Translate.net, the FSF translators 
>>> list, Samsung, HTC..., or even national linguistic institutes and 
>>> libraries and national standard bodies, or gaming developement 
>>> companies, or manufacturers of various automated domestic 
>>> appliances), that still have not enough time to inverst in those 
>>> minority languages with a confirmed interest and activity to these 
>>> languages, even if they are full CLDR TC members. Note also that 
>>> their interest may not be on the whole comprehensive dataset, but 
>>> only on some core data (or just the "basic" or "modern" coverages; 
>>> for example they will not need to include all possible calendars and 
>>> onlya subset of date and number formats).
>>>
>>> This way those languages can have a possible start even with small 
>>> participation (this won't hurt the business of CLDR TC members that 
>>> have still no specific interest in those languages, they are not 
>>> required to provide these CLDR data wit htheir products, or can 
>>> provide them provisionally by a specific installation option).
>>>
>>> If there are errors that need correction, more people will join the 
>>> program to paraticipate in the next release. This will help bootstart 
>>> these languages, increase the number of users of the published data, 
>>> and finally will increase the level of particpation of "major 
>>> players" that will add some more of them in their monitored data, and 
>>> when this will occur, the betting thresholds will be raised a bit.
> 
> More major player don't necessarily means more localizers. For my language, no matter which translation agency you contact, things will eventually end up wth our team, because we generally don't nave enough translators to go around, and localizing is a special skill set as well. So, there are no more localizers available.
> 
> I think it will be similar for many long tail languages, because the speakers tend to live in economically deprived areas and/or to have relatively few speakers.
> 
> 
> 
>> I don't see why any such changes need to be done preemptively, though. 
>> As long as it is understood that votes don't go to waste, just log in 
>> and vote as much as you can.  Saying, "See, I've contributed this data 
>> and I need X" makes more sense than changing the rules ahead of time, 
>> without knowing what the participation actually will be.
> 
>> Perhaps something such as, the first time you cast a vote that doesn't 
>> win or the first time you encounter ("Changes to this item require 4 
>> votes." ) a message comes up that explains the process, explains why 
>> signing up more people doesn't help, and basically says, send us a 
>> mail/file a bug if you are stuck (just as Fòram
>> did.)
> 
> I think it's a good idea to have a message, or to put it in the instructions somewhere. Seeing the person has already contributed is also a good thing, so you get an idea that they are willing and able to deliver something usable. Maybe we could have an official threshold that should be completed first for new locales, say, the minimal data set? For locales already worked on like mine, such a threshold wouldn't be easi to define - we could have a more loose criterium here
> - if we see you're putting in an effort, ask us for more voting power.
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> 
> 
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