Think Global, Make Locales!

Young Japanese University student I’m Kenji Inoue aka deq, 22 years old guy living in Osaka, Japan. I study at Osaka Institute of Technology majoring computer science (pursuing M.S.).

As a localization/translation assistant My late activities focus on software localization, translation and documentation. Four years ago I co-founded a successful project called perldocjp which gathers and hosts Japanese translations of Perl-related documentations and, some days ago, June 12th, 2006, I just organized an event called Perl Transfest, where people got together and just translated documentations related Perl language. I contacted a person who is a contributor of OmegaT, an open-source translation memory tool, to make a speech to introduce a CAT (computer assisted translation) tool to the community. Using these CAT tools so far at experimental stage for developers and localizers but I hope they settle for us and improve actual efficiency of localization and translation. We, open-source software communities, always lack manpowers, aren’t we? We anyway need to solve them, sometimes by technology, and I would like to support it.

Ah, being a WTS developer, I ought to have to explain my programming skills. I love programming since I was nine or ten. Like an average computer nerd, at that age I loved to write recursive functions in Basic where the old school goto statement governed, the world before Dijkstra lit up. As a typical Internet kid, after I just entered into a high school, reading RFCs and reverse engineering softwares I loved to write IRC bots in Perl to protect our IRC channels fighting against Eastern Europe or Middle East teenagers. And, yes, I haven’t made anything really important to show you to flatter myself, like an ordinary Slashdot user. Uhmmm, well, at least I am proofed that I’m smart enough to create a half-borrowed-from-other-extension-source-codes extension called PageZoom and that’s all.

Guitars My sole hobby (except computer and programming, of course) is to play acoustic guitar solo. It contains dynamics, statics, passion, hope, happiness, sadness and every little thing whole in one instrument. I’m just knocked over.

Kenji

Who are we?
We are a team of international translators for Mozilla family application extensions, and up to now there are 45 languages and more then 300 translators present on BabelZilla!

Who are the Administrators?
Jürgen aka Fenian, from Germany, is a Tech Admin and a translator for de & de-DE.
Charles aka Ptit Lutin, from France, is a Tech Admin and a translator for fr & fr-FR.
Luana aka MatrixIsAllOver, from Italy, is a P.R. Developer! and a translator for it & it-IT.

Who is the SuperMod (goofinator), coordinator of all the Forums?
Jean-Bernard aka Goofy, the chosen one from France, is a SuperMod and a translator for fr & fr-FR.

Who are the General Moderators of the general Forums?
(in alphabetical order of nick names)
Roel aka Asterxx from Netherlands,
Carlos aka chuzo from Spain,
Luca aka l0stintranslation from Italy,
Oliver aka ReinekeFux from Germany,
Miz aka seabow from Japan,
Claudio aka Teboga from Brazil,
Yorick aka Tibox from France,
and last but not least ,
Emil aka WizKid from Sweden!

Who are the BabelZillian Moderators of the BabelZillian Forums?
(in alphabetical order of nick names)
Finn aka AlleyKat from Denmark,
Ahmet aka amurati from Kosovo,
Stoyan aka arris from Bulgaria,
Yuhang aka blackdire from China,
Kenji aka deq from Japan,
Gert-Paul aka Gert-Paul from Netherlands,
Alexander aka Hawksthorne from Bulgaria,
Tao aka hermit from China (currently living in Germany!),
Marius aka Melon from Norway,
R. Nicolas aka MorZilla from Argentina,
Rodrigo aka Rodrigo Bergmann Laurindo from Brazil,
George aka Sonickydon from Greece,
Team erweiterungen.de aka Team erweiterungen.de from Germany,
and last but not least ,
Leszek aka teo from Poland!

The WTS (Web Translation System) is the system used on BabelZilla to allow online translation and to manage uploading/downloading extensions & language files.

The first version of the WTS is based on a script elaborated by WizKid, and it has been modified and improved by the Tech Admins, Fenian and Ptit Lutin.

Currently the Tech Admins are working on the next future and innovative version of the Web Translation System.

For more information, please read the Thread “Next version of the WTS“.

We are a team of international translators for Mozilla family applications extensions, and our goal is to provide localizations by means of connecting extension developers and translators in order to contribute to spread open source applications worldwide.
To submit your extension/translation you can use the Web Translation System.
In case of doubts and/or curiosities you may consult the BabelZilla English Help Section (available also in other languages!), and if you need a translator, look into the (partial) list of translators (more than 55 nations up to now!)

For all nations which don’t have English as national language it is very important to have their locale included in the official author’s build, because if a user looks for an extension in big web sites such as addons.mozilla.org or extensionsmirror.nl and so on, (s)he will find the extension in his/her language immediatly.

Moreover, if the locale is not included in the official build, the user will find XUL errors if (s)he updates the extension with Firefox/Thunderbird/Flock/etc automatic update.
Because of this fact, we decided to start a world project to let authors and translators easily manage extension translations!

This portal is born on August 2005, is called BabelZilla (http://babelzilla.org/) and “contains” already more then 150 extensions (among all the first five most popular ones)

1. FlashGot
2. NoScript
3. Fasterfox
4. Adblock
5. IE Tab

All “BabelZilla people” will be glad to say to every new translator and new developer: “Welcome!“