Add Arabic language to l.d.o

What is your relation to http://drupal.org/project/ar ?

We would need to somehow get the people who already contributed there aware and on board of this effort. Otherwise you are duplicating work, which is painful.

I remember plasing the same issue, however, my colleague khalddon is also thinking the same, and I really want to contribute in an organised way so I thought about localisation server as an organised and coordinated way to contribute without duplicating work.
we will strart from where khaldoon and others finished, then after the team is created and server is set up among us, we will invite other member to join and work on continuing translation of the remaining strings of Drupal 6, and become ready for drupal 7.

so Please add Arabic language to localize.drupal.org

Instead of pretending they do not exist, we should integrate existing work. Translating Drupal is a huge effort. Even some teams created months ago did not manage to achieve a full Drupal core translation. While you might not know the existing CVS translation maintainers, it is very easy to contact them given the contact forms on drupal.org. I've sent alla a mail at http://drupal.org/user/8991, and pointed him to this issue.

work on the drupal 6 arabic translation is almost non existent because non of the original contributors to the 4 and 5 series have actually adopted drupal 6 (including me).

however until now no new translators volunteered or sent any contributions except for a couple of people who submitted translations so broken it was impossible to review them (I actually merged on of these and reverted the patch when I did a review).

so sinjab, I'd love to work with you, please send the strings you say you already translated and I'll review and commit them. and if you are serious about completing the translation and you feel that localize.drupal.org will help you then sure let's use it.

but please first send the translations you already have through the http://drupal.org/project/ar issue queue.

Hi,
Let me first thank you for the for Excellent Work performed for D6
I presented in the project issues queues to submit PO file
http://drupal.org/node/202992#comment-2123296
I sent an email to Alaa but haven't received a response
Please could you advise me of the best way to communicate with him

sorry N2H I did not receive any emails and must have missed the po file you attached reviewing now.

Hi,
look here
The following is a list of modules translated

N2H after looking over the file I remembered that I've actually seen it before and dismissed it after stumbling upon incorrect punctuation (you fail to use the arabic comma), incorrect hamza, lots of typos and outright spelling mistakes, inconsistent transliteration and non standard translations like شحطة for underscore.

plus I couldn't tell why you chose to replace some of the already existing translations.

however I must apologize for being too hasty in dismissing it. I see that you're trying to build a community and gather volunteers @ drupalarabic.com, I'm sure we can work out these quality issues.

to get things moving I've merged some units from the installer.po file you attached in #202992 but marked them all as fuzzy since they still need further editing. I'll do the same with the files listed here http://groups.drupal.org/node/24655 (not sure if there are files to be found on drupalarabic.com but if there are any please open seperate issues and attach them).

but we'll need to work much harder on improving the quality (let's have this converation on a seperate issue or on IRC).

since July 8, 2009 You did not respond, You waited 4 months,
I translated installer.po, modules-forum.po, modules, php.po, modules-trigger.po
I did not replace because the translation does not exist,
If exist you must making Changes in the CVS

@alaa: while you can choose to work with the CVS workflow, the goal of the localize.drupal.org service is to replace that hopefully soon. Plus it also allows you to export stuff to CVS until we can make automated (CVS-less) packaging / workflows work. So maybe the best way is not to work on merging work in CVS first.

@Gábor I don't mind adding arabic to localize.drupal.org specially if it'll make it easier to manage translations of contrib modules. but are the choices mutually exclusive? does adding arabic to localize.drupal.org mean that one day we won't be able to use cvs anymore?

Right, you won't be able to use CVS anymore.

then if I have any choice in the matter I prefer CVS

While CVS may be the tool of choice for you, I think that switching to the l.d.o server will open up your effort to a lot more contributors.

possibly, but it's a difficult trade off between a tool that's convenient to use now for future benefits that might never materialize.

so I prefer to wait till it's no longer beta and reports of how it helped/failed to help other language teams are available.

or of course until actual translators who are already contributing prefer l.d.o, which is why I asked sinjab so send the work he's already done

The location server in French , it really helped to improve French Translation
it would be interesting to have a arabic L.D.O, I believe this new approach provides a better Translation capability and
facilitates translation.
I am convinced it is more adapted to the specific Arabic

Arabic would not be the only one to wait and see. We are still working out some of the kinks, so I'd consider this is a totally fine approach. Reopen this once you feel comfortable moving.

Hello,

First I don't really understand why @alaa prefers CVS than using l.d.o

I have a bunch of contributed modules, that are running on my site at http://www.ishki.com/
And I would love to see Arabic contributions via l.d.o as well as me contributing Arabic translations to many of the modules that I use daily on Drupal Arabic sites.

Please consider this @alaa, there are lots of Arabic contributors that might help making Arabic Drupal translations better on l.d.o.

This should move quick!

In the attachment my translation of Drupal V6.
Yes I changed a lot of terms.
I'm ready to complete the translation of the all basic modules,so there won't be differences.
Thanx.

@Ifadah: the current Arabic translation is maintained in CVS, and the issue queue for that project is http://drupal.org/project/ar so please submit your changes there.

We are starting an Arabic translation team for Drupal. As Arabic is not yet added to localize.drupal.org We need your assistance.

@Alaa is the current maintainer of Arabic translation and for 2 years now he haven't continued work on D6 translation. I offered assistance and sent him my translation work (so did other members). But no response and no willing to cooperate. His last communication with me was that D6 if off and he will be working on D7, in the end nothing was done.

Alaa is preventing the rest of the community to contribute to Arabic translation and at the same time he is not working to bring a complete refined translation for D6. That is brevetting expanding Drupal adoption by Arabic development community.

We need to start and we cant stay behind waiting for the mercy of a maintainer.

This is a community objective and I suggest a voting be held to support the replacement of current maintainer.

What is the experience of others?

Read above and see the linked threads you can get an idea about the situation.

Hum, you came to agree it is postponed?!?

Now it is active :-)

work on the arabic translation has been slow yes, but it is inaccurate to say nothing happened in 2 years. the translation is currently 78% complete.

I reviewed my communication with Sourour and I can't see where I said 6 is off or mentioned working on 7 at all.

I review all translations submitted by anyone either via email or on the ar project issue queue, there have been little contribution from new translators. unfortunately most have been of extremely poor quality (of the objective type as in translated variable names, severe spelling mistakes).

there where a couple of contributors who sent fine translations (sourour included). for some reason they insist on re-translating already translated strings instead of tackling the untranslated ones, introducing big and in my opinion unnecessary changes to terminology. not sure how other translation teams handle disagreement over terminology but anyway it has little effect on "how complete" the current translation is.

@alaa

Please don't think we are dummies and you are the only one who has the experience of translating to Arabic, I have 10 years working with Arabic software for the biggest names in the online industry (Yahoo maktoob, Skype and BlackBerry to name a few) I worked with teams of over 200 professionals on localization. If you claim yourself as an open source believer you must work with the rest of the community.

And for my communication (and other members communications that you always ignore and come back saying "Oh I missed that") here is a copy of your e-mail and if you wish I will forward it to you and check the headers:

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Alaa Abd El Fattah wrote:

Hi Sourour,

the problem is neither I nor any of the past contributors to drupal
translation have embraced Drupal version 6. due to the extremely long
time it took for important contrib modules to get ported (1.5 years for
views and cck, 2 years for panels, etc.) and the fact that some widely
used modules are still in alpha or beta quality for version 6 it looks
like I'll skip this release all together.

Do you think it is fair to use all the bits and pieces of the translation that we sent over the past to come at the end and state that it is 78% completed without any appreciation to any of the members that contributed. Then explain how is it that all our translation where so bad to the extent that you could not continue with them.

We are the community Alaa and you are not taking us seriously.

I will be calling other wittiness here to support Arabic cause.

then the drupal 7 thing was a miscommunication, my bad. I meant me, and the past translators are likely to skip adopting drupal 6. not skip on translating it.

please review some of the translations sent via the issue queue yourself. the first batch I merged immediately and reviewed later because I felt it was not my place to deny the work of anyone specially when I failed to do it myself. but I had to revert that merge due to the extreme bad quality. because of that experience I insist on reviewing everything before merging. it's not because I think I'm a better translator than anyone. I just think I'm good enough to make a judgement on whether a translation is broken or not.

the more problematic situation I guess is the one about disagreement on terminology and conflicts in translation. and I understand how it can be frustrating for you. since I did refuse perfectly usable translations based on that conflict. but again I repeat non of the refused translations where actually for files that where untranslated. and they where all mostly conflicting translations of strings already translated.

the work committed to CVS was not derived from translations sent by you or by anyone else on the issue queue since as I explained they all conflicted with what I consider to be already established terminology. it was done by past translators like Khaled Hosny and Abdel Rahman Ghareeb (and of course merging and cleaning up older translations).

since the conflict in terminology issue seems to be a difficult one to overcome. I suggest we delay it and do something constructive instead. there are 7 files that are completely untranslated (new files where only a handful of old strings could be reused if any). we are unlikely to disagree on terminology there cause there is almost nothing to conflict with. why not start with them? I assue you they'll be committed immediatly:

modules-syslog.po
modules-trigger.po
modules-translation.po
modules-openid.po
modules-update.po
modules-php.po
modules-locale.po

after we do these we can ease into the terminology debate with modules-taxonomy.po which is at 42%. since source strings saw big terminology shift from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 the translation needs to be reconsidered anyway.

it is unfortunate that you feel so negatively about this, I reviewed our communication again and felt that they where friendly, constructive and showed mutual respect. it seems we cut off with each of us expecting the other to do something or take a next step. it does feel to me like miscommunication (for which I apologize). as always I await your contribution and promise to respond quickly.

You are really good with words Alaa;I think you will be very fine as a politician.

Ok, to prove you wrong, I replied to your above e-mail of "it looks like I'll skip this release all together" ,where you reassured that you meant to skip the translation of D6.

here is my reply :

We know it took a lot of time to get druapl 6 ready, but as you
already know druapl doesn't have much of a popularity in the Arabic
online presence. We need to give Arabic native none developers a test
drive of stranded druapl Arabic, we are not talking here about custom
modules. Get them interested enough and you will get contributors
willing to help translate most important none core modules.

and here is you "Alaa" reply admitting you were not interested on working on D6 translation until I (and other members) pushed you to it:

all I was saying is why the original pool of translators (including me)
failed to do the translation. we talk about it, we promise we will do
it. but ultimately speaking since we don't use the version we are not
motivated enough to spare the time.

So Alaa you are not spearing the time to work on the translation because you don't need it, What about the rest of us here that would like to use D6. Is it that you own D6 translation and no one has the right to step and ask for a translation. OR if you are not into D6 translation why not set if free of your ownership so we can work on it !!!!

You are the maintainer Alaa and you should be the central point of translation activity, you should be leading and taking initiatives. You are not only an auditor for what the community provides. Where as it looks like you don't what to engage yourself with the rest of the community, no discussions on drupal.org with translation members nor any guidelines to those who are willing to help.

For taking decisions on what is considers a good translation or not (terminology), this must be a community decision and you should not monopoly this privilege. We as a community should agree on terminology and list of phrase approved for the translation. Where you have done no effort to collaborate on this issue. It has been always your opinion of what is good or bad will prevail.

The translation provided for D5 and you imported to D6 (which you think is perfect and should not be touched) in my opinion and other members opinion is far from being perfect, containing no standardization on terminology and lost of wrong translation some of which I pointed out in my email communication. Even you have pointed this was true in one of your emails :

I agree with that too, I think our older translations where actually
better in this regard. 5 was mostly translated by two translators who
where not as intimately familiar with drupal as previous translators,
and when in doubt one tends to avoid diverging from source strings.

admin and help strings in particular are prone to that due to their
complexity.

I ask you one more time Alaa, Set us free ,let us function as a community and move Arabic translation to open air we everybody can help to bring the best to Druapl. Arabic translation should be on localization server D.O. not held hostage in member hands.

_{[Edited by kiamlaluno] to remove the bold style used for two sentences}

Hi people
I think Mr Sourour Al-khatib is right. Mr alaa has no time to discuss changing the terms, he simply refuses (after months not days) any translated files contain dissimilar terms just like what happend with N2H here
http://drupal.org/node/570404
With this situation there's no way to contribute, and makes people to have their own pack, I attached my own one.
So all what we need is piecing together the files scattered here and there and reviewing them to get full good version.

ok this is getting weird, and I'm not sure how to respond without adding to the hostility.

thanks ifadah for reposting your translations, the single big file you sent before was difficult to deal with. are these exactly the same translations in #23 or different?

first let me clarify one thing. I'm not defending "my terms", around a dozen translators have contributed to drupal translation since 2004. the terminology is the result of their work and discussions within Arabeyes.org (where most FOSS arabization is coordinated and standardised).

while no one in their right mind would claim current drupal translation is perfect, I find it unreasonable to expect me to discard the result of all this hard work casually. that does not mean I'm against improving/changing current terminology. in fact I think it is required since drupal itself changes it's terminology with each release. I just happen to think arabeyes is the better forum to discuss arabic localization terminology.

I've pointed out before on the issue queue and to sorour by email to an extremely imperfect terminology file that I automatically extracted from drupal pots as a way to start a conversation about terminology. if people think that's a valid approach I can regenerate the file and manually clean it up so we can have a better base.

if you think that localization server will somehow make resolving this terminology and other conflicts over "subjective" quality issues easier. please explain how. I don't find it unreasonable to wait for clear benefits before abandoning workflow and tools that worked fine for years.

if you have totally different ideas for how to discuss and reach agreement on terminology then please share.

if your main concern is how incomplete Drupal translation is then terminology shouldn't be an issue at all, stick to the current terminology and style and help finish the translation (which stands at 83% of the strings and 70% of the word count at the moment).

even after that there is alot to do that doesn't require complete overhaul of the terminology, like improving the prose, reviewing grammar and punctuation, unifying style and tone, etc.

again if you have an argument for how using l.d.o helps with these tasks (specially the difficult ones) I'm all ears.

Oh Alaa this is getting wired isn't it! ,the wired thing is your excellent maneuvers to avoid answering or commenting to my discussion points above.

And for Ifadah, I think you did another maneuver not responding to his comment.

I think you have the ability to go on for ever without any problem. In the end we are loosing time and you have nothing to loose as nothing is changing.

But dont worry we will be keeping up with you.

Ok, you think "arabeyes is the better forum to discuss arabic localization terminology." well , I and other members don't share you that believe. For many reasons (not of importance to this discussion) your arabeyes is like dead, if you look at home page on arabeyes.org you will find that last updated pages were 2007 and 2009 that means 2 years saprate and there are no acknowledged translation and tremenlogy spicaltes working with araeyes, there for we are not benefiting anything. At the end we are not talking about your forum we are talking about Drupal translation and your forum have nothing to do with it.

You are still trying to take the community on your hands and move them wherever you wish. We are drupal community and there are no rules enforced to go with you to another site to discuss translation. you have not discussed this with us before and now you find it relevant!!!!.

My argument Alaa is very simple. you don't have the right to enforce your terminology and tools on the rest of the community. Localization server is used by more than 90% of drupal translations and is the future for all translation effort as planed by Drupal.org. if you don't like this approach then you cant monopoly the decision of moving to the localization server if it was the desire of the rest of the community.

How the localization server will help us to better deal with terminology issues and organize effort ?
Well, as pointed to me by Gábor Hojtsy in his email:

localize.drupal.org
supports translation groups. You can fully organize a translation
group with discussions, announcements, wiki pages, etc. on
localize.drupal.org

As you see, localize.drupal.org has all the communication space required to organize the effort and to work on terminology as that was one of its objectives. If you still not aware of that please read guidelines for localize.drupal.org.

@Gábor, @kiamlaluno
Kindly comment on this as we are going into endless loops with Alaa. If you wish to have a voting please do.

First of all, as being one of Arabic Drupal translators, sorry for holing the translation back. I promised Alaa to finish the translation several times, but unfortunately I couldn't keep my promise for various reasons.

We are plaining to make core Drupal modules 100% translated to Arabic by the end of February, the work started already and we are 83% now (70% if you base on word count).

As for terminology, nothing is set in stone, we can always try to improve it, however doing massive terminology changes based on no discussions at all is unacceptable neither now or in the future. I too don't like some of the currently used terms, but I try to follow the existing terminology to keep things consistent; terminology changes should be done once and checked carefully to make sure it is consistent everywhere.

As for Arabeyes, despite the infrequently updated main website, Arabeyes has very active community and we are translating various large scale FOSS projects; Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, GNOME, KDE, Xfce and LXDE, to name few. We have an active wiki and mailing lists where various Arabic in FOSS discussions take place. The website don't get updated frequently since most of our activities run on regular basis and can be tracked upstream (i.e. when gnome 2.28 got released, updated Arabic translation, there is nothing special to be announced here). Every one is invited to join Arabeyes mailing lists in take part in discussing Arabic in FOSS related issues, and help making better Arabised platform.

Commenting on the original issue, I found all on-line localisation tools counter institutive, they are just slow, unreliable and featureless to be dependable. True that it might help better communication, but good old mailing lists can do so, without forcing the constraints of such on other community members.

We need a good reason to abandon a reliable, well tested workflow for another one, if it is about "social translation" goodies, again we can have mailings lists for discussions, wkis and announcements without the constraints of on-line translation.

Interesting, a bunch of Arabs arguing. You don't see that everyday do you... oh wait you do :)

I worked on translating Drupal prior to 6 and as Alaa said I'm one of the people who didn't contribute that much to the Drupal 6 translation because I personally didn't use it in any of my projects till very recently. However that is not the case anymore at least for me.

Aside from the big words like "set us free" (Honestly, I thought for a second I was reading the script for Amistad), I don't really see the benefit for moving the translation to l.d.o Now.

I don't see what's wrong with having someone filter the translations submitted by the community. That _is_ what the maintainer is supposed to do, you don't simply merge every patch submitted to your project because it's been submitted "by the people".

I definitely agree that we need some work done on the terminology. And I agree with Khaled Hosney that a massive change in terminology without even discussing it is unacceptable and I would think that anybody with a huge experience in localization would know this. The discussion can be done through Arabeyes, they are an active community with big expertise in Arabization and judging their activity by the number of updated items on their front page is in my opinion a little bit naive, don't you think? You do realize that "The Open Source community" uses a lot of methods to communicate.

Bottom line is, we're working now on the translation, and I don't see any benefit in moving to l.d.o now, your help is needed so instead of arguing, pick a file today and start translating it.

@khaledhosny I attached 100% completed Arabic translation pack.
And we just need adding Arabic to localize.drupal.org, so the community can improve it, and add some non core modules translation as well.

Excuse me but if you claim that Arabeyes is dead then you don't have enough idea about Arabic and FOSS.

We don't have much contributers and that's why we might not have much activity but stuff are being done.

http://svn.arabeyes.org/viewvc/ shows commits from 7 and 8 days. This is work being done.

The wiki has activity on the 26th and 27th of January and both are part of the unified terminology discussion: http://wiki.arabeyes.org/techdict_talk:System_tray

The mailing lists have seen email exchanges in January.

Maybe Alaa is not that free but I also see that:

1) You did not do enough research about FOSS and Arabic
2) You misunderstand what alaa is trying to do and saying.
3) You are submiting broken stuff to him. I didn't verify this myself yet you guys are not even trying to prove him wrong.
4) You want to kick him out for various reasons and not even trying to establish a constructive discussion. Do you have a hidden agenda or something ?

I am not speaking for Alaa but I personally completely understand why you need it.

However, there is a slight problem with l.d.o which is it makes the maintainer unable to use CVS to manage the translations at all. This issue has been acknowledged already.

Oh my god all Arabeyes members are here to defined it's inductance , what an active community you are 2 years dead and now raised !!! very good move Alaa.

so now our discussion is all about Arabeyes not drupal. or about drupal localization server not being as efficient as Arabeyes. you really made it simple to the rest of us.

All of you who worked on previous translation and did not have any interest or any time to spare to work on D6 (as you stated) now came to work after we have objected your laziness all that time. Is this the right way a community should function?.

@msameer : what hidden agenda I might have ? hmmm may be I want to invade drupal and take over. This is an open discussion on D.O. my friend so maybe your hidden agenda might be outside some where on Arabeyes.

I'm not an arabeyes contributer anymore if you might have noticed so no way I'm having a hidden agenda. I'm only listing possible solutions.

I'm not defending Arabeyes. I'm saying that it's alive and that you did not dig enough. Maybe it's also arabeyes' mistake for not showing signs of life.

I did not even contribute to Drupal5. and take care not to call me lazy.

All what I'm saying is you want to kick the guy out without even considering why he doesn't want to move to l.d.o.

And BTW, when you say Ok, you think "arabeyes is the better forum to discuss arabic localization terminology." well , I and other members don't share you that believe. For many reasons (not of importance to this discussion) then you are basically ignoring the suggestions by the current maintainer without even discussing it.

Another comment here would be a waste of my time with this level of idiocy. Sourour, You might wanna learn how to read. I highly doubt that you passed high school with this IQ level you're showing right now. When you have a usable translation from the community submit it and let the maintainer include it. When you have nothing usable please just shut up or show us the very useful and usable translation that Alaa decided (as an evil dictator who won't give you freedom) to ignore.

The points are clear, so I'll see you when the translation is 100% done.

Ps: I'm not a member of Arabeyes and yet I have the minimum level of knowledge which helps me to understand that they weren't dead for 2 years.

@BooDy
It looks like we have a big dummy here called "BooDy" who replies to comments without even reading the comments before. if you where good at school puke head you would of red Alaa comment #31 where he states

there where a couple of contributors who sent fine translations (sourour included).

So I think your the one that needs to "shut up" in the end.

OK.

I'm sorry for what BooDy's said.

Let's try to summarize the problems:

1) You think that alaa is not active enough: The guy maintained it since drupal 4.7 or even earlier. It could be that he got busy like all of us. The solution is not to just kick him out like that since he showed up with a good intention.

2) There is a disagreement about the terminology: This is probably due to the different dialect used (Egyptian from our side and whatever you use from your side - excuse my ignorance). While we tried hard to find terms that are proper Arabic terms there is a slight possibility we might have got some of them incorrect.

3) There is the Drupal Arabization Group so let's use that space to discuss the terminology problems we are having and come up with solutions.

4) You claim that Alaa ignores your translations and he is denying this. He's saying that you are changing the terminology of the already existing translations without touching the untranslated strings. He's also saying that there are spellingt and grammar mistakes in the files and some plural forms are not correct. No blame here; humans make mistakes.

5) The l.d.o account: You can't expect him to change the tools he is using whenever someone new joins and asks for it. If you prove yourself, he won't be able to object to it.

6) The way FOSS projects work is that you join, contribute, become active, change yourself and even take the lead after that if you want. Just having a revolution and trying to overthrow people like this is not a good sign of a healthy community.

7) If l.d.o is not comfortable for alaa, would it be OK for you guys to discuss the available tools to see what else can be used ?

@sinjab
Being "used by 51 languages" isn't an argument to start with, every team has his own workflow and what fits "51 languages" doesn't necessarily fit every one else. You have to show a real proven benefit that we can't achieve otherwise.

@Ifadah
Sorry, but reviewing your translation takes more time than doing it from scratch; first you are using a file tree different from the CVS tree, so I've to check individual files manually and see which is which; a wasted time I could have used to do something more useful, then your diffs aren't clean; lots of useless line wrapping diffs and I've to extract the useful stuff from this noise, more work and wasted time, then you change existing translations, and since this is a unilateral change I first need to make my mind and see if I agree to your change or not, more wasted time, even I agree, I've to check all files for every changed term to see if it were changed everywhere or not, otherwise we end up with a chaotic mess (believe me, years doing FOSS Arabisation, I have seen all sorts of such mess, and I've no more interest in cleaning after others). I'd rather spend all that wasted time doing the translation myself, it is really much less effort in my experience. And I didn't even talk about the quality of the translation.

Bottom line, you are not helping anyone trying to review and integrate your contributions, this is not why FOSS works, not the ones I've seen at least.

P.S. You also cleared all file headers which contains copyright notices, this AFAIK isn't legally acceptable.

@Sourour Al-khatib
Sorry, but from now on I'm ignoring you and your comments, I've no interest in whatever you say.

i am going through your translation. it is slow work though since again you've chosen to change nearly all the terminology. I'm only merging translations that don't conflict in this first pass.

that confusion about the files is probably an argument for l.d.o, it is quite difficult for someone not familiar with CVS to get to the correct files (would have helped if people communicated before starting to translate of course). so I wouldn't blame ifahad for that.

I'm sure the clearing of headers was caused by a tool and not ifahad's fault either.

anyways if you're interested in reviewing ifahad's work I renamed the files and uploaded them to the Pootle server @ http://translate.arabtechies.net as suggestions. which means you narrow down to new translations, get a feel for how far they are from terminology being used else where and accept or reject them.

I've already merged and committed a handful of them.

@msameer
Thank you msameer for your professional communication.

I would like to comment on your points:

1) You think that alaa is not active enough: The guy maintained it since drupal 4.7 or even earlier. It could be that he got busy like all of us. The solution is not to just kick him out like that since he showed up with a good intention.

I and other members have tired communicating with Alaa to move the translation but the weak communication he had with us plus not showing enough interest or providing guidelines to members how are willing to help brought us to a dead end.

And for Kicking Alaa out that was not the main issue. We need Alaa with us, All we need is a public space on drupal.org where we can organize translation effort without having each one of us sending emails to Alaa and not even getting response. we are moving each aside because none of us knows what the others are doing, Alaa only have these strings in his hand. I repeat again, we need to function as a community and to do this we should be all on the same platform using the same tools and Alaa could be our maintainer to guide us and organize the effort, Do you really think this can be accomplished via email communication or CVS, If Alaa wouldhelp us on trying to be useful and active on Arabic translation by moving it to localization server then we don't have any problem in Alaa keeping his position as maintainer .

2) There is a disagreement about the terminology: This is probably due to the different dialect used (Egyptian from our side and whatever you use from your side - excuse my ignorance). While we tried hard to find terms that are proper Arabic terms there is a slight possibility we might have got some of them incorrect.

As I have stated before, I have good experience with translation projects and I want to transfer and utilize this experience to the benefit of the drupal community. I have communicated with other members and they are willing to learn how translating should be done and how terminology can be defied through project steps. This is an experience that I cant transfer using Alaa tools.We need to help others learn how to translate properly not just judge their effort to not being good enough. That what localization space offers , an interactive environment that we all can make good use of.

3) There is the Drupal Arabization Group so let's use that space to discuss the terminology problems we are having and come up with solutions.

Let me share something with you, I started a group called "Arabic" on drupal.org and one of its objectives was to help the translation effort of core and contributed modules. what do you expect happend to that group?
Group was denied for the following reason Gábor sent:
"Note:
language work is to be organized on localize.drupal.org"

There for I would imagine that "Gábor" has to verify this action due to the existence of your group.

4) You claim that Alaa ignores your translations and he is denying this. He's saying that you are changing the terminology of the already existing translations without touching the untranslated strings. He's also saying that there are spellingt and grammar mistakes in the files and some plural forms are not correct. No blame here; humans make mistakes.

In the files I sent I completed all translation including all untranslated strings and so did other members "see Ifadah file above". While I touched on translated strings to bring my view of some terminology differences and I started a discussion with Alaa over email so we can reach a final decision on what is most appropriate, which unfortunately he didn't follow up on. Moving to localization server again will make these decision more easier to take as we will be using input from other members.

5) The l.d.o account: You can't expect him to change the tools he is using whenever someone new joins and asks for it. If you prove yourself, he won't be able to object to it.

Please understand that we are not "someone", read the comments above and follow links for other discussions over drupal.org and you will discover that other share same view on moving to l.d.o account.

6) The way FOSS projects work is that you join, contribute, become active, change yourself and even take the lead after that if you want. Just having a revolution and trying to overthrow people like this is not a good sign of a healthy community.

Please see my comment on point 5, I didn't come to change everything in "a revolution" I came to bring something good for the community and saw that things are not moving, I started my communication with Alla as other members did and reached a dead end. I then emailed other members that contributed over D.O. and they all agreed that we should move while Alaa is not helping in anyway. I reached Gábor and he was the one that pointed to me that I should bring my view to this issue node here.

7) If l.d.o is not comfortable for alaa, would it be OK for you guys to discuss the available tools to see what else can be used ?

Do you think it is fair after all the delay in D6 translation using tools Alaa prefers, we should stick to these tools. We tried them and they where not efficient and we have the right to try something else. Alaa should commit to the community needs and not be selfish.

As for your response to @sinjab

We are using Drupal because we think it is the best CMS and others feel the same about it. And if 51 teams think it is good to use l.d.o then we should be considering the benefits these teams found working on l.d.o. We always need to explore best ways to enhance our work and getting maximum output of all what drupal.org provides.

hello everybody,

i am reading your conversation but it is too much as like a book. i can't read all conversation. every body have done good work but i think there is misunderstanding.
although what is final result in regards of make a drupal site in Arabic (drupal 6).
i am making a malty-language site in drupal (English & Arabic).
in English, its fine but in Arabic it is not fully translated.

every person that working for drupal community is respected, i hope there would be a big result for Sourour Al-khatib . because he spend his two year for drupal commmunity.

please comment

Regards
Royal_Jat

@alaa

I believe the problem will easily be solved if you agreed to add the Arabic translation to l.d.o!!

Isn't that easy and simple?

@Sourour

1) From what I've seen. it took him a whole to catch up but the communication channel was functional at the end. Let's not discuss why your translations didn't get merged because this is tied to other factors.
We completely understand the need for a public space. More details below.
We don't have to be on the same platform using the same tools as long as we agree on common way to do things.
He wants CVS and you want a l.d.o team and a public space to discuss.
What can be done is that we find an intermediate solution that fulfills all the needs.
CVS is not for you. He did not ask you to use it. It's for him to do his job as the maintainer. No one ever said that CVS is friendly and it'd be a joke to ask translators to use it.

2) Yes you have a good experience in translating projects and Alaa himself acknowledged your good contributions. However, the terminology is different. Our current terminology needs to be cleaned up and Khaled admitted that.
However, changing the current terminology will introduce more confusion because users will find 2 exact user scenarios with 2 different words used. All what we are asking is to please keep the old terminology and translate the untranslated parts. Once we reach a full translation, we can start cleaning up the terminology. No one is asking you to use a terminology you don't like. We are just asking for some sort of a "transition period".

3) Frustrating. I have to admit but you can't judge us by whatever the Drupal groups team's decided ;-)
I'm inviting you again to join the Arabization group as I think it will serve the purpose you want.

4) I'm not in a position to judge your translations. I believe you without even checking it. I'm more interested in Arabic support in FOSS not in translating software. I'm just asking you to please use the current terminology until we complete the files then we start working on the terminology.

5) OK, a new person instead of someone. No one is denying your efforts. I'm just trying to bring the fragmented Arabic community to sit on one table.

6) Your effort is really appreciated by everyone. We really need all of the efforts. I'm just trying to find a solution.

7) Sorry, I meant "other web translation tools". My bad.
Something like pootle. It allows you to do all what you need and doesn't prevent him from using CVS. Is that fine for you ?
I'm saying it again. No one asked you to use CVS :-)

51 teams using l.d.o is not an argument. How any people use windows ? How many are using Internet explorer ? This discussion will lead to nothing.

@msameer

Thank you for the effort to try to bring us all to one table and I respect your devotion.

1- I need to ask you :

What is the real motivation behind Alaa refusing the l.d.o ? It will not be that hard for someone with his experience to use the methodology on l.d.o.
Cant we be like other OS communities where leadership is not the issue while accomplishments and community collaboration is?

I will relief you and other Egyptian members who are representing the defense lawyers for Alaa in this discussion from answering this question :
As you have stated above you are interested in FOSS and I know that you and the rest of the Egyptian team are active on FOSS Arabic translation where you are dominating the OS Arabic translation effort for most of OS software.
You and your team translation effort is based on a terminology you have agreed upon (Egyptian terminology), there for You (and your team that include Alaa) will not allow this terminology to be diverted or even touched. To insure your full control and domination over drupal Arabic translation Alaa MUST be the leader that controls the translation effort and enforces your team terminology over others (CVS control). By moving to l.d.o Alaa will lose this control and hence Drupal will escape the Egyptian terminology domination.

Why cant you accept other Arab none Egyptian terminology?? We should be working for the benefit of all, or is this not the case?

2- Why are you deliberately trying to depicts that this is my war "a new person" against Alaa? ignoring all comments from other community members on this issue and other threads over D.O.

3- You state : the fact that 51 teams are using l.d.o is not an argument, Then if there was 1000 other teams using CVS and e-mail communication, that also is not an argument!!!. so we are even on which is which.

4- As I have stated before, drupal.org administration have emphases twice to me via direct email that Groups on groups.drupal.org are not allowed to be used for translation effort and consider violating groups guidelines, while at the same time pointing at l.d.o to be the right place for such activity.
please Gábor Hojtsy can you explain this again here?

1) I'm not Alaa's lawyer. I can completely zone out if you want. I can then use my time for other things.
The only reason preventing him from moving to l.d.o is that it will prevent _HIM_ from using CVS which is what he is using.
The terminology has nothing to do with that.

Egyptians are not dominating FOSS Arabization. It's just that we were there and we did it.
We are not even using Egyptian terminology. The mozilla/firefox translation was done by a Syrian guy IIRC. The terminology we are using has been decided by a bunch of guys. Egyptian, Moroccan, Saudi and others. I can't recall all of them. Do you think all of them will just use Egyptian terminology and be happy ?

All what we are asking for is that we preserve the existing terminology until we fully translate Drupal and then we start discussing the new terminology. Nothing more, nothing less!
We don't want users to be confused because the terminology is different. It's inconsistent and no one would like the final result.

2) You are new. This is a fact and it is not something to be ashamed of. We did that originally for drupal 4.x (Can't remember which version) because we needed it for eglug.org. Chronologically you are new!

3) I didn't say that others are using email and CVS. I am only saying that CVS is what _HE_ is using and that _HE_ wants to keep using it. Why do you think it's fair to force him to quit his tools ?
I offered a Drupal group, Arabeyes' mailing lists, an alternative web translation service.

4) l.d.o is not yet ready. The group is already there. The group doesn't deal with localization only. It should deal with other stuff like BiDi and Arabic related problems.

Hello all,

Well, msameer, the differences and hardships of terminology are hardly a function of locality/dialect. You'd see the same arguments being driven from Bahrain to Morocco via Syria and Egypt, in defence of some really inefficient, and plainly vague translations simply because they are what has been commonly used for some time, or because they sound more common to the so called "average street person". It's an interesting social/cultural phenomena.

Mostly, these translation (and the whole mode of arabisation) has been set by big commercial players in their interfaces and prose, and followed on by the public who were *educated by it*. There's hasn't really been much open, community-based input to it since the begining. Only now this is begining to take place, slowly.

Issues of clarity, significance, uniqueness and suitability for Arabic derivability etc; as well as possibility of future collisions, and consistency with related domains and scientific fields are rarely considered, as much as I have seen. Not to mention the proliferation of bad style, and outright syntactic and spelling mistakes which contribute to mal-educating more people. Most other languages I know of don't suffer from these issues localisation.

We do certainly need more conversation about arabisation choices, and fearing to bring again the name of the seemingly dreaded Arabeyes community, I have to say that there has been very constructive discussions and progress on that front taking place over there, by people from Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, KSA, and other countries. I sincerely invite people to join, or at least take a peek; and most importantly to layback. I get worked-up myself in discussions of localisation, but I try to not reflect this on discussion or the persons as it's not constructive.

Regards,

PS: Greetings Sinjab. I've seen a documentary about you on AlJazeera a couple of years ago. I admire your determination, and work.

@msameer

If you are afraid that changing terminology will harm Arabic users then we are seeking to accomplish the same objective. It looks like you didn't understand my point. let me explain :

1- Your approach:continue with current terminology until we have a full D6 translation then we can work on improving terminology.

Pro and Cons of your approach:
while this should accelerate the translation work and users will have a complete D6 translation in a short time; on the other hand it will have the same old problems (defects) found in D5 translation. Users will always have to look back if new translation updates have been released. and most important will continue fighting communication with Alaa to convince him to apply modifications on terms, where there is no method to insure majority point of view will be respected and applied to terminology.

You see my friend:
Can you 100% guarantee Alaa will accept (commit) to terminology change request for any term proposed by community members?.
how we can insure his cooperation to do changes if we don't have a powerful communication channel that we all have to go through in order to reach decisions!! here where the l.d.o come into place, shifting decision making to the community side while keeping Alaa as a maintainer to execute what the majority agrees upon.This is a healthy community!.

Your approach :
We get D6 ready -> we set and wait for community feedback -> we work on improving terminology -> we set and wait for community feedback-> loop

2-My approach: rebuild the terminology with the help of the community to guarantee we have most accepted terms, and then apply modifications to current incomplete translation,after that we continue work using the new terminology until we reach a complete refined D6 translation.

Pro and Cons : while this will delay the final translation release it will insure maximum adoption and satisfaction from the community since they were part of the translation and terminology process (using l.d.o).
Another advantage that we will eventually have more members (pool) involved in the translation effort whom also have gained experiences and skills from working with main translators (community training!!).
The final result is in accelerating translation effort with more efficiency and less terminology disagreements, making working on future releases much easier.

My approach:
Work on terminology with the rest of the community (using l.d.o) -> improving current incomplete D6 translation-> completing D6 translation -> more satisfied community -> Add elected members to translation pool -> accelerate D7 translation -> continue translation community growth.

Conclusion :
Your approach is centered on the translation completion time, giving no priority to its quality. at the same time shrinking community role in improving the translation ,limiting its involvement, without transferring any knowledge nor experience to the members.

My approach is centered on utilizing the potential energy wthin the community,about getting the community involved, transfer knowledge and experience to them, work with them to improve quality of translation , accelerate translation effort, resulting in community receives maximum benefits.

2) yes I'm new with this user name "sourour" but that doesn't prove anything. FYI my first introduction to drupal was in early 2005 when we started developing news portal for maktoob.com using D4.7 which was just released. I used a nick name at that time using company email and I cant use that anymore since I left the company. That Drupal account is still used now by other member for the company benefit. I started with computers in 1988 when FORTRAN and punch cards where considered high tech.

3) HE has his own tools , WE are a community and if He is part of it HE has to go with the majority not with what he likes.

4) l.d.o is not ready isn't a valid argument. since nothing is ever 100% ready. Drupal and all modules (and software in the world) receive daily patches and security fixes. It is human work that will never be perfect. at the same time Alaa tools are considered old and need to evolve with the rest of Drupal community.

I haven't contributed Drupal Arabic translations beyond my own project-scoped terms that never made it to any public space. But I think I have something to add to this needlessly long thread.

This is clearly a CVS vs l.d.o debate. Let's not bring in any other issues. So please everyone, tell us why we should stick to CVS and not move to l.d.o, or why should we move to l.d.o and abandon CVS? What can't be achieved with either?

@shadysamir

Thanks for joining us on this discussion

Your question:
why should we move to l.d.o and abandon CVS? What can't be achieved with either?

I have answered in details on the above long comment thread #65. Kindly take time to review.

Sorry but #65 does not really explain why we shouldnt use CVS and lists no advantage of l.d.o over CVS that cannot be achieved otherwise

Update: Let me rephrase, what justifies the cost of conversion to l.d.o?

@shadysamir

I think you didn't read through the lines and establish a general understanding of the answer to your question based on #65.

let me summaries what I was trying to say on #65 to answer :what justifies the cost of conversion to l.d.o?

1- Community needs, involvement, interaction, collaboration, and decision making are better addressed through the tools and space provided by l.d.o rather than, CVS which only allows one type of communication between maintainer and the rest of the community.

2- efficiency, accuracy, and satisfaction of the translation output can be guaranteed ONLY through community awareness of the translation effort and their ability to be part of the process which only can be achieved through l.d.o tools and space where You can fully organize a translation group with discussions, announcements, wiki pages, etc. on localize.drupal.org. That can not be accomplished based on CVS.

3- Through the community involvement there will be eventually education and learning process to transfer translation knowledge and skills to the community, this will result in expanding the translators pool to include more contributors.

Now your question would be better rephrased as:what is the cost of continuing with CVS?

Answer: less community involvement and interest, more disagreements on terminology, more distraction and scattering efforts (which we now see in the form of several different translations spreading over the web from external drupal sites) .
Continuing endless communication failures between maintainer and the rest of the community (as we have seen through the past 2 years of D6 transitional delay).

@ all

Before "l.d.o" vs. "CVS":

"Terminology" vs. "Wrong Translation"?

I was happy that such a conversation is open. It clarified many things.

If conversion to l.d.o will open the way for contributors to share knowledge and experience to push D6 Arabic translation, then I give my vote to it.

I was extremely happy to see the 30th Jan 2010 updated Drupal Arabic interface translation, because I have downloaded another version months ago, but I was shocked. The updated version is another shock!

I noticed what I considered an important thing to point to:

The Arabic translation of Drupal has too many words wrongly translated. Those wrongly translated words are considered "terms" by the maintainer.
Translators trying to build on this version (to make it complete) will have to go back to the wrong translated words (terms!) and correct them; hence the suffering and complaints of translators who want to contribute, because those wrong translated words have already been considered "TERMS" that shouldn't be changed.

Since the maintainer blocks the way for discussing such wrong and perplexing translated words, then no contributor will be able to translate any more.

If the only (or the better) avaialble way to open the way again is conversion to l.d.o, then it is the right choice.

@Sourour
Let's put the efforts done by earlier contributors including the maintainer into perspective. There has already been a lot of discussions and decisions made re terminology and translation on other forums for years that lead to what's on CVS right now. And it's clear, from what the maintainer and earlier contributors debated, that the other forums are not just for Drupal but they serve FOSS as a whole which is a great effort towards standardization. By singling out CVS as a platform and excluding the work done on other forums you are not being fair. And by listing what's good about l.d.o without explaining how it cant be achieved with CVS in addition to those other forums is also not fair in my opinion.

The cost of conversion to l.d.o should take into account moving those years of discussions and experience over there, unless you wish to start from zero, which is something I know you dont want to do. So what do you suggest to achieve that?

You still need to present proof of less community interest, other than yours, with using CVS. And it seems that disagreements about translation were resolved properly using other forums. And I can see that your 1, 2, and 3 points were being achieved without l.d.o and through a very committed and professional community on other forums.

I do understand that skipping l.d.o for now gives a left-out feeling on all the features it offers, but this alone should not be the only basis of our decision.

I am actually asking you to present more convincing motives to move to l.d.o even if it comes across as just disagreeing with you.

@J Ammar

In all fairness, there is no evidence that the maintainer is blocking contributors. Even in the communication provided by those opposing him. He is simply doing his job of "maintaining" the quality of the project. I can sense unjustified defiance to the workflow established by maintainer and early contributors without presenting strong enough reason.

@shadysamir

So now the "Egyptian" defense Committee has elected lawyer "shadysamir" to continue representing Alaa and his team on this discussion.

Don't worry, if you have 100 lawyers to replace every time one of them is burned out, we still going to burn some more.There for your artificial argument to kill this discussion aiming to keep CVS and Alaa domination will not work.
No hard feelings just an introduction...;-)

Answers :

1- by listing what's good about l.d.o without explaining how it cant be achieved with CVS in addition to those other forums is also not fair in my opinion.

I'm not looking at explaining how l.d.o advantages can be achieved using CVS, for the simple reason that if it was achievable easily and effectively using CVS then Drupal.org wouldn't have adopted new l.d.o community strategy!. And if you think that decision is not enough to prove anything in this argument I assure you it was taken by experts of D.O after factoring community effects considerations.
While for those who are working on other forums for "Standardization" as you stated. They will be the first to benefit from the new translation community to be created over l.d.o , introducing a new channel to collaborate with the druapl Arabic community on enhancing terminology and spreading education on their approach (That if they were truly seeking community support and benefits Not their terminology domination) . About what is "fair", it is not fair to keep the whole Arabic community on D.O. out of being able to enhance terminology in an effective collaborative environment such as l.d.o just because you and Alaa like to use CVS.

2- The cost of conversion to l.d.o should take into account moving those years of discussions and experience over there, unless you wish to start from zero, which is something I know you dont want to do. So what do you suggest to achieve that?

Of course we need to start from Zero!!! how would you imagine we can filter and refine current week and some time false terms if we don't process and refilter all current translation. TO be honest with you, from my review of D5 and D6 translation which I inspected line by line from A to Z (believe it or not) there is some horrible mistakes that with my 10 years experience in Arabic software I haven't seen before. This is my point of view and as you can see there are others that share this point of view on this discussion as well!. I do respect the effort placed in current translation, while denying my right and other members right to contribute to this effort in an effective collaborative environment such as l.d.o based on the fear of distorting what you have already accomplished is not logical at all.We want to help and we will respect what your terminology have accomplished as long as you respect what the community feels is more appropriate to change and this will not happen until we set together and work on drupal translation on l.d.o

3- You still need to present proof of less community interest, other than yours, with using CVS. And it seems that disagreements about translation were resolved properly using other forums. And I can see that your 1, 2, and 3 points were being achieved without l.d.o and through a very committed and professional community on other forums.

I think you didn't spare time to read the above comments and links, talking about the frustration experience other members and myself have gone through trying to work with Alaa and his CVS, and like it or not this did result in "less community interest". Proving this is by looking at the results of 2 years delay on D6 transitional work which indicates community lost interest in helping accelerate the process. and the abandoning of members who tried to help on translation effort with CVS and Alaa to work on their own translation copies (like Ifadah.com and drupalarabic.com), and finally our issue here that we are discussing now and all the members on it does mean that we have lost interest in CVS and its communication strategy.

For other forums you talked about, that is not a valid argument, since you and your team are the only ones that are aware of such discussions and we as Drupal Arabic community are excluded from. Never the less why we should be moving to your forum to discuss translation issues specific to Drupal if D.O has provided the space on l.d.o for localization community to address Drupal specific translation issues.

@shadysamir

You state: "there is no evidence that the maintainer is blocking contributors. Even in the communication provided by those opposing him"

While, I'm a witness that he did, and what do you call "not responding" or accepting any discussion on terminology changes in above comments?.

You state:He is simply doing his job of "maintaining" the quality of the project
that is Not called maintaining quality that is call monopolizing the judgment of what is considered quality.Neglecting community effort to improve translation,and showing no respect to community ability to collaborate.The community SHOULD BE THE JUDGE of what is considered quality NOT maintainer and to achieve this proper communication a platform like l.d.o should be utilized.

@Sourour

Your tone and attitude are totally unacceptable. I'm nobody's lawyer. I'm sorry I wasted my time on you. Have a good day!

@shadysamir @msameer

You're wasting your time with a moron who can't even spell and claims to have used "bunch" cards in 1988, Just let him rot and help us with the translation please and stop feeding the stupid troll. Really, he's not worth anybody's time.

@BooDy: Please avoid to call other people stupid troll, or moron.

Calling a person stupid troll doesn't help in taking a decision about Arabic translation. If you think it's wasted time to reply, then you should not reply; if other people think it is worth replying, then they will keep replying (in spite of what you can say).

@BooDy:
Thank you for taking my advice on comment #49 and starting to read comments before replying. You not just did that you also spilled check my over 1000 word comments on this page and found "bunch", I'm going to give you A+ my boy and going to fix that mistake, really a big thanks.

@kiamlaluno:
leave BooDy to express his frustration and weakness, it is at these times a person can show the real "him". I'm not going to lower myself to his level since he is in my children age. BooDy is expressing ethics and values he had gained from his environment.

Read this in Arabic : "Ittafak Al 3arabou An Laa Ya ttafikou"

Come on guys....

@Sourour Al-khatib: My concern is for the level of the discussion; if BooDy (or anybody else) is used to say one person is idiot, or has a low level of IQ just because he thinks differently from him, then it is better he finds another place.

This is the second time he leaves such comments; I am not sure we should tolerate this happens again.

@shadysamir #72

Regarding evidence opposing your opinion of ...

He is simply doing his job of "maintaining" the quality of the project.

To know the quality, I took the first translation file "aggregator.po" to prove evidence of wrongly translated words (terms) that cannot be built on if the maintainer has the last word in keeping them untouched. (not to mention other mistakes)

Important terms would be "news", "item", "feed", "category", "URL", "path".

1.
"items", "news", "news items", [and "feed items"] are all translated to read "news"! (To complicate matters, this is not always the case!)

Examples:

"!title category latest items"
Reads:
"!title category latest news"

"Update items"
Reads:
"Update news"

"Categorize news items "
Reads:
"Categorize news"

"You are not allowed to categorize this feed item."
Reads:
"You are not allowed to categorize this news."

"New feed items are automatically filed in the checked categories."
Reads:
"New news in this item will automatically filed in the checked categories. "

" Number of feed items displayed in feed and category summary pages."
Reads:
" Number of news from each feed displayed in feed and category summary pages."

2.
When "feed/feeds" and "feed items" are not translated to read "news", they are both translated, sometimes, to read "feed/feeds".

" A space-separated list of HTML tags allowed in the content of feed items"
Reads:
" A space-separated list of HTML tags allowed in the content of feeds"

" The length of time to retain feed items before discarding"
Reads:
" The length of time to retain feeds before discarding"

"Categories allow feed items from different feeds to be grouped together."
Reads:
"Categories allow feeds from different sources to be grouped together."

3.
"category" is generally translated to read "categorization" (or "group"!):

"For each feed or feed category"
Reads:
"For each feed or categorization"

"Category overview"
Reads:
"Categorizations overview"

(If the translator kept the singular "category", he would have the Arabic word he decided to be the term for "categorization"; hence the play to avoid translating "categorization". Well, it may come to mind for a while to keep the translation of "category", but when facing the word "categorization", what to do?).

"Feeds may be grouped in categories, generally by topic."
Reads:
"Feeds may be grouped in groups, usually in topic."

"The most recent items in either a feed or category can be displayed as a block through the <a href=\"@admin-block\">blocks administration page</a>."
Reads:
"The most recent items in either a feed or group can be displayed as a block through the <a href=\"@admin-block\">blocks administration page</a>."

4.
"URL" is translated to read "path". Of course, in the translation process, the translator will face the word "path" and recognize its translation and will have to go back to "URL" and change its translation.

-----

What is the result of claiming that there are basic terms when, indeed, there no terms at all?
In addition to perplexing people trying to build on the translation, it will give the maintainer the right to go even further in adopting other wrong translations (Well, since terms are his own, what about other words?)
Escaping establishing the translation of basic words (terms?) will result in dropping information from the original string or changing the meaning, making it impossible to be built on.

See the following examples:

1.
"Feeds contain feed items, or individual posts published by the site providing the feed".
Reads (the word is just lost):
"Feeds contain individual feeds or posts published by the site providing the feed.

2.
Administrators can <a href=\"@feededit\">add, edit and delete feeds</a> and choose how often to check each feed for newly updated items.
Reads (words are lost):
Site Administrator can <a href=\"@feededit\">add, edit and delete feeds</a> and choose how often to check for updated feeds.

3.
"Categories allow feed items from different feeds to be grouped together."
Reads:
"Categories allow feeds from different sources to be grouped together."

4.
"(by selecting a category when creating or editing a feed)"
Reads:
"(by selecting a category when adding a feed)"

5.
"(via the Categorize page available from feed item listings)"
Reads:
"(via the Categorize page available from feeds page)"

6.
"There is no new syndicated content from %site."
Reads:
"There are no new contents from %site."

7.
" Please enter a unique title"
Reads:
"Please enter another name "

10.
All the following pairs read exactly the same:
"The category %category has been deleted."
"Category %category deleted."

"Category %category added."
"The category %category has been added."

Category %category deleted.
The category %category has been deleted.

I hope this will clarify what is the ...

unjustified defiance

.

@J Ammar
This have been done on purpose! following English vocabulary blindly will never result in good Arabic translation, there is nothing in Arabic as "news item" (عنصر أخبار); it is is "خبر" the Arabic singular form of news, which doesn't exist in English; it isn't our mistake that Arabic is a far richer language than English. The same goes for "feed item"; "عنصر تلقيمات" is just silly if not plain wrong.

For "has been" stuff, I guess you want "تم حذفها", however this form doesn't exist in Arabic (proper Arabic I mean, not news papers Arabic), we instead use the passive form "حُذفت" which is correct.

Many of what people tend to consider as "translation mistakes" based on shallow observation, is rather carefully chosen translation after much thought to give more "native" nature to translation, not machine like translations made by many big corporations. This tells you and others why we are reluctant to accept many of submitted translation; because it doesn't met the quality standards we are aiming too.

@J Ammar #81

Great work, now please tell me how moving to l.d.o will solve what you mentioned? (I haven't read @khaledhosny reply yet)

@khaledhosny

You have a point. But let's not be dragged into defending the work that's been done. What are the channels to discuss it in a formal organized way other than l.d.o? How did you guys reach such decisions and rules? And how can others contribute?

@shadysamir
Arabeyes mailings lists have been used in the past, then Arabeyes wiki where we started a dedicated collaborative computing dictionary that every one was invited to join, we also try to formalise best translation practices there. Drupal is no exception here.

http://wiki.arabeyes.org/
http://wiki.arabeyes.org/القاموس_التقني

@J Ammar #81

update:

You hit the nail right on it its top there.

I think we can utilize your argument to fully organize a translation group with discussions, announcements, wiki pages, etc. on l.d.o .

All main translators and other community members will be able to layout there contributions and suggestions regarding terminology and other issues easily without having to look anywhere outside D.O. The benefits are obvious ..better agreement and standardization , accelerated work flow and more active community collaboration.

Those how are trying to move Drupal Arabic community out of D.O. to work on their platform and enforce their domination and control over community activity can't seem to understand that Drupal Arabic community activity over l.d.o will help there cause not harm it.

Having Drupal hosting our Arabic translation effort will endorse the presence of Arabic activity over OS communities on web.While closing the door on ourselves and working in silent will weaken our accomplishment and presence compared to other languages and communities.

Countries and languages groups are competing to show their ability to utilize and contribute over majority of OS communities. Aiming at greater attention and influence on the directions theses communities are moving at.While creating your own isolated community will not help bring attention to the importance of your activtety and you will loose your ability to influence.

@kiamlaluno

So, making us sound like a group of control freaks who are dieing hard to keep Drupal translation under their control by moving it to there masonicEgyptian organization, is OK, right?

P.S. Arabeyes has never ever been an Egyptian group; it wasn't even founded by Egyptians!

@khaledhosny: There is a lot of difference between saying to a person you don't see or know that he has a low IQ, and saying that you are trying to keep Drupal translation under control.
My comment was for everybody, not just for BooDy; if this is the level of debate you (impersonal you) like, then please find another place to debate.

The fact the only given reply is that the other person is an idiot makes me think that who writes didn't have any better argument, and shifts the topic to a completely different one (from the problem to resolve to the person who is speaking / writing). So far, having said that didn't take you all to any place, nor will it take you to any place.

@kiamlaluno
@khaledhosny

khaledhosny is trying to avoid commenting on my last discussion on "Why we need to stay on D.O and use l.d.o". since he has no argument to prove me wrong.

Now to shift the focus of the discussion, he is bringing false climes that doesn't have any relation to our discussion :

1- I never stated Arabeyes is an Egyptian group, I stated that all of those how are defining Alaa are Egyptians that might have interest in Arabeyes.

2- If Arabeyes wasn't founded by Egyptians (only) why are you so keen on presenting yourself as the sole guardian and defender of its cause.

3- My argument on the necessity of moving to l.d.o has nothing against the Arabeyes, As you can see from my comments on this page I always emphasized the benefits of future collaboration between an l.d.o Arabic translation community and main Arabic translation terminology project such as Arabeyes.

Arabeyes strategy should not be looking at tightening its grip on OS Arabic translation effort (leading to weakening Arabic community translation activity across OS communities). Rather Arabeyes should function as the organizer and coordinator of such effort, looking at educating the community on proper translation approaches and spreading their methodology, resulting in more presence and activity for the Arabic community across OS communities. In short Arabeyes should feed Arabic communities over the web NOT feed on them.

@khaledhosny #82

Though you have carefully elected examples to express the kind of "quality" you mean, but it does not work either!

there is nothing in Arabic as "news item" (عنصر أخبار)

But, there is something in Arabic as "news item" (فقرة أخبار).

Still, you can argue that in "news item" specifically, the translation would be BETTER be (خبر). You cannot argue that (خبر) is the ONLY possibility. And definitely you cannot generalize dropping the word "item" in other contexts.

The same goes for "feed item"; "عنصر تلقيمات" is just silly if not plain wrong.

The same does not necessarily go for "feed item"; "فقرة تلقيم" or "فقرة تلقيمات" is just fine and is a possibility.

You may argue for dealing with "feed" as with "news" as a possibility (But here you will face this: both "feed" and "item" do have singular and plural in Arabic and in English; not like "news". You can go further claiming that "item" itself is a strange or inappropriate word in the Arabic context, but, again, you will have to face the fact that "item" is not less strange than "feed" itself in this context.)

(The translator decided that the chosen Arabic word is the only possibilty. Then he saw it strange. Lastly, he dropped it. Translating "item" to mean "عنصر" (most likely to read "element") as the only possibility resulted in making the translator escaping it and dropping it altogether in some contexts!)

For "has been" stuff, I guess you want "تم حذفها", however this form doesn't exist in Arabic (proper Arabic I mean, not news papers Arabic), we instead use the passive form "حُذفت" which is correct.

For "has been" stuff, I guess you mean tense form (perfect form; mood, to be specific); which doesn't exist in Arabic (Whether "proper" Arabic or "newspapers" Arabic). See bellow.

Many of what people tend to consider as "translation mistakes" based on shallow observation, is rather carefully chosen translation after much thought to give more "native" nature to translation, not machine like translations made by many big corporations.

Many of what the translator tends to consider as "untouchable TERMS" based on deep observation, is rather causually chosen translation after mechanically following certain "rules"; resulting in more perplexing nature of translation:

What do SHALLOW and DEEP mean in what we are discussing here?
Let's go DEEP:

Shallow reasoning:
Using a phrase like "تم حذفها" means that the translator made what too many poeple are tempted to do when translating "passive voice" English phrases, whereas the correct Arabic translation would be the Arabic "passive voice" derivation "حُذفت" , "حُذِف".

Deep reasoning:
Using a phrase like "تم حذفها" means that the translator wanted to convey the mood of "(just) completed" an action (conveyed by the English "has/have"), but did not produce the Arabic "passive voice" derivation you want to preserve.
The popularity of the incorrect use of the Arabic "passive" voice seems to be the only issue occupying the mind of the translator.

The Arabic word "تم" is used in forming passive attitude by too many people. It is the "has/have been" combination that induces this. Doing so, and frequently, with the simple attitude (past simple, for example) is incorrect. But generalizing by saying this is always incorrect even in "perfect" attitude (past perfect, for example) needs to be discussed; especially when you have to differentiate between a pair of phrases that differ only in "attitude".

It is fine to use the Arabic passive derivation to produce Arabic "passive" attitude. But it is also fine to add the other part of the lost meaning; since the Arabic word allows so (even if this word was misused too many times).

I can argue that using the phrase "تم حذفها" is correct (but not sticky to passive attitude APPEARANCE in the original English text)! I can even use "more proper" phrase like "أُتِم حذفها" to be sticky to "(just) completing an action" mood and "passive" attitude in Standard Arabic derivation. It is not the fault of the Arabic verb to have this capability.

If the translator thinks that the Arabic verb "أُتِم" is a translation for "has been", then he is looking blindly to the vocabulary and he will never see it a POSSIBILITY for Arabic translation (or even to understand why "others" are still discussing it).
By considering this possibility, you will have pairs containing:

past tense+simple mood = deleted; translated to "حُذفت".
past tense+perfect mood= has been deleted; translated to "أُتِم حذفها".

(Away from further discussions regarding this example)

Even if this is discussed (by ALL; because possibilities DO exist) and agreed upon, it does not justify other fatal mistakes, that translators are REQUIRED to build on.

When "others" keep insisting on that there is a basic thing somehow wrong or mistaken means that they have their possible solutions to a REAL PROBLEM in the translation process.

If there is poor communication, then any other medium (as l.d.o) is welcomed.

@shadysamir #83

Moving to l.d.o will solve what I mentioned by providing platform exposed to all willing contributors to discuss whatever a contributor raise for discussion. There is no closed box for putting rules or external source to monitor what is going on (Unless it is agreed upon by ALL to adopt such a source).

Spending all this time using the present tool to produce such translation is clear evidence that it needs to be changed in whatever possible way. Since l.d.o is the future plan for Drupal.org, then it is a suitable choice to prepare to.

@J Ammar #91

AFAIK the earlier contributors seem to have agreed upon the other platform(s). And what you mentioned in #90 you can still propose and discuss and debate without having to use l.d.o. Until now I cant give my vote to l.d.o since no one showed me a unique advantage to justify the major move.

In your second paragraph, are you complaining about the time it to took to produce the translation? Or the quality of the translation? Both are not CVS fault I suppose, so again this is no advantage of l.d.o.

What you mentioned in #90 is valid and healthy. Why not discuss it and contribute it using CVS and the other forums that probably already have resources to answer your concerns or to support them?

And to tell you the truth, I would trust those who showed commitment and professionalism and continue to show it rather than entertain any whims of someone who asks us to "use IE NOT Firefox" to be able to post in Arabic! (http://groups.drupal.org/node/46028)

@J Ammar

An excellent point of view you have expressed in your comment on terminology issues, I have a list of more than 90 issues (some similar to what you have described) that will need to be discussed at some point when the translation effort is released to the community on l.d.o.

Before answering @shadysamir I urge you to read my comments (which directly answers his question) : #69, #73

@The Egyptian team

Again, failing to provide valid argument drives you and your team to try to attack me personally in an attempt to break the discussion output.
I don't know when you and your team will learn to respect others point of view and show professionalism communication on a public discussion. As I stated before everyone express the values and ethics he gains from his environment.

This is not relevant to our discussion but anyway I will satisfy your curiosity:

The following is NOT relevant to current discussion
Why "use IE?"
The link you sent my boy (http://groups.drupal.org/node/46028) is based on an issue still to be addressed in D.O, see: http://drupal.org/node/695128.
The through testing I did on cross-platform cross-browser basis showed that having not installed Arabic support on your system and browsing a site that uses fonts which does not support Arabic natively (for font face display) will result in improper display of Arabic text. the only browser I fond to overcome this issue is IE where the browser engine dynamically checks for this issue and replaces the original font with basic Arabic supporting font.
End

@Sourour

Excuse me, did I say that you could address me? Exactly, I didn't. Thank you for not doing that again.

who decides to add Arabic language to localize.drupal.org or not to add ...?
the majority said "yes" http://groups.drupal.org/node/47724
Please Mr alaa If you do not want to work with L.D.O let us work, do not be selfish, Arabic web needs drupal
I am sure that Mr Sourour Al-khatib is finally the right person to lead and coordinate the work of the team and understand the needs of end users

@N2H

I do not think Alaa said anything about never joining l.d.o. In his own words:

I prefer to wait till it's no longer beta and reports of how it helped/failed to help other language teams are available. or of course until actual translators who are already contributing prefer l.d.o

And this was considered an acceptable approach. What else are we discussing? 8 persons who are frustrated that their own translation never made it to CVS should not be considered "majority" in my opinion.

And I personally do not trust a leader who reports issues of this nature: http://drupal.org/node/695128

@ The Egyptian team

We are not looking at how many people got their translation refused because Alaa hasn't speared the time or had intention of guiding them on his terminology (in most cases didn't even bother to reply to their emails), his communication tools and CVS strategy led the community to loose interest in translation effort while keeping members like @N2H and others who tried hard and needed Alaa cooperation to accomplish what he thinks of as correct terminology out of choices . This is why moving to l.d.o.is important.

We are looking at how many members other than Alaa lawyer committee (The Egyptian team) are supporting moving to l.d.o.
You can clearly see from this discussion that all members who left comment on this issue (excluding The Egyptian team) are supporting moving to l.d.o.

Who told you
"Alaa waiting for beta to finish then he will be considering moving to l.d.o."
was considered an acceptable approach. Why are you providing wrong misleading statements on behalf of all members. CAN YOU prove that most members accept Alaa approach? (other than The Egyptian team)

I never stated I intend to lead the translation effort and trust me I will not have interest in such responsibility, my effort on this discussion is for the community cause.

For the issue I reported, where you think it is very silly and not of the type that requires any attention, I will be grateful to see your ingenious solution that will prove this not to be even considered an issue (please reply on issue node).

This is a language and not a module. It is up to the community to choose which translation is suited and not project maintainers (This reminds me of the stupid thing called the french academy). A living language is one that's evolution comes from the society, not from a group of language genies. While their efforts are respectable, the best process is have those language professionals suggest translations to the community, give arguments, and let the community decide. Quality of translations is not defined by language pros opinion. Quality is defined by how much the target community adheres to it.
l.d.o (AFAIK) enables a democratic process (though is could have been better if a suggestion could be accompanied by an argument)

A quick look at the poll (though only 14 people voted) shows that it obviously needs to move to l.d.o
http://groups.drupal.org/node/47724

Please stop this "weirdly" growing issue and put ar on l.d.o

@redben

Of course the quality of translation is defined by language pros opinion. Aren't the rules of grammar and punctuation the opinion of the pros? If we ignore the hard work made by FOSS Arabic community and earlier translators then we will end up with a finished but broken Arabic translation. In the process of fact-finding and investigating complaints about rejected translation work, I took a look at that work. It was shameful to say the least. The quality of Arabic language used is similar to, if not worse than, machine translation. The examples are endless and it's quite out of context to bring it all into this thread.

I am on neither side of the persons in dispute here, but I care about Arabic language and think that Drupal translation was maintained properly up to a set quality standard for years by its current maintainer. And it's fair to observe that people who accuse the maintainer of ignoring their contribution are refusing to stick to the standards laid out by FOSS community while pushing for their own translation to be blindly committed.

If your argument about translation maintainer vs module maintainer is valid then why didnt Drupal webmaster object to the maintainer's decision to wait? Instead he considered his decision to be acceptable (#20 "fine approach")

What needs to be done is for contributors to take the maintainer's advice and go back to the drawing table. They need to work on the unfinished terms using same standards that are already there. Then suggest any changes they see needed to the already translated terms and to the standards.

@shadysamir

Of course the quality of translation is defined by language pros opinion. Aren't the rules of grammar and punctuation the opinion of the pros?

Grammar and punctuation is one thing, translation and vocabulary is an other. It is about adding new concepts to arabic not changing the semantics or syntax of the language. The arabic grammar rules are a jewel, (rules that cover everything with almost no exception, which is not the case of many languages ! ).
Translating new concepts while adhering to these rules is what i don't see in the current drupal translation (and a lot of other fields too). Instead of using the tools arabic gives us to create new words for new concepts (think of the awzaan) some people just take the latin world and put them. One i can think of in current drupal translation is لج for login...!
Oh and about quality ! in the current translation i stumbled upon عالخط for online. This is clearly country specific.

If we ignore the hard work made by FOSS Arabic community and earlier translators

This is in no way what i suggest. Giving that work to the community does not mean ignoring

If your argument about translation maintainer vs module maintainer is valid then why didnt Drupal webmaster object to the maintainer's decision to wait? Instead he considered his decision to be acceptable (#20 "fine approach")

Gabor's decision is certainly based on drupal's community guidelines. He can't force t maintainers (though you can see that he is selling l.d.o at #13 ) to use something new. At least not now since it is still beta. l.d.o is an alternative now. Expect it to be the only way to be supported in the future.
And i can assure you my argument about translation vs module is valid. Why would drupal webmasters choose to create a different system to manage translation, if there were no differences in managing modules and translations. The point is a module is a piece created to answer the specific needs of its developer and hopefully the community, if it doesn't totally fit your needs you can start an alternative module. Translation is more transverse. But may be we could have arabic translation package of school A and another of school B ? i don't think i'd like to see this happen. And this discussion makes me think that their are chances this happens

What needs to be done is for contributors to take the maintainer's advice and go back to the drawing table. They need to work on the unfinished terms using same standards that are already there. Then suggest any changes they see needed to the already translated terms and to the standards.

@kiamlaluno
@Gábor Hojtsy

This discussion has completed it's life cycle reaching maximum fruitful output. Needless to say we are now interning into repeating pointless loops not resulting in any value add to its objectives.

In my prospective and based on what other members have expressed, the continuing of this discussion represents an obstacle to Arabic translation effort in any direction. Hence Drupal Arabic community deserves a final verdict from D.O webmasters after we all had our words load and clear expressing opinions on "Add Arabic language to l.d.o" issue.

We ask your cooperation to close this issue once for all.

Webmasters cannot force a decision about using l.d.o, in the same way we do not force anybody to host code in Drupal.org CVS. Gábor Hojtsy would not keep to report when there is already another place where the translation is done, if he would force users to translate on l.d.o.

@kiamlaluno

In our case, where majority of the community members are supporting moving translation to l.d.o.while maintainer is insisting on refusing after all the hard discussion and debating we went through.

we need an exit point here,do you think there will be any result of this issue or other similar issues if the maintainer is the decision maker and not the community?

what are we arguing about if we don't have any right to change maintainer or switch to l.d.o. in favor of community consensus???

How do you recommend this issue to be resolved, we already reached a dead end with maintainer so what do you suggest?

@redben #100

I don't think that the maintainer ever ignored any contributors. He just declined their translation based on guidelines established by Arabic FOSS community and he did point the contributors to those guidelines so that they can review their translation based on them.

For "Online" translation specifically I did discuss it with the maintainer and his answer was simple: "think of something better" and until now I wasn't able to. But you have to look at the rejected translations suggested by contributors to understand what I mean by quality.

The point is, using CVS is not preventing anyone from contributing. And we should respect the decision of the maintainer to not move to l.d.o when it's still not justified and when it's still in beta.

Because a "final verdict" was asked for, here is my opinion copied from an email:

I'm seeing heavyweight attitudes from multiple sides of arguments in this issue, with childish name calling and similar offtopic sidelines from **all parties involved** which make it hard to consider it as a serious discussion and give either side any benefit at all.

Hi Gábor,

I agree with you on "with childish name calling and similar offtopic sidelines", and I'm sorry we expressed ourselves wrongly.

While, your decision of "not not taking any decision" is in the benefit of the minority of community members who are pushing to keep translation effort constrained within strictly controlled moderation from current maintainer and his group.

If you find this discussion not valid, then All we are asking for is to consider community majority opinions on this discussion who have expressed the need and support of moving to I.d.o

I am not sure that anybody has considered that the move to l.d.o will become inevitable at some point in the future.

In the future l.d.o will not be optional as it is now, but will be the only way to contribute translations to Drupal. The CVS based service will be shut down at some point in the future.

So the whole discussion is about _when_ to move not _if_ to move.

So let's start it over and try to answer the right question :
@Alaa, you obviously do not think about moving to l.d.o now. Can you please inform the community about when (i mean i rough date range) you will consider moving ?
Since l.d.o will be the only way to go in the future. We need to start thinking about how we'll migrate.
- What are the barriers to moving from cvs ?
- how to solve them ?
- who can help ?

@redben

Obviously @Alaa is not even interested in discussing l.d.o with us.

@Gábor
@kiamlaluno

How do you expect our discussion will be beneficial to the community and results in actual steps to resolve our issue if the main party that should be concerned more than others is absent??? our maintainer is not following up on this issue, we are not authorized to execute any outcomes of this discussion. All of us are loosing interest and will be looking for alternatives outside D.O. if we are not encouraged by real action to move forward in any direction.

@redben

There are many issues with on-line translation tools, being an on-line tool means one must have Internet access all the time which is not guaranteed. The lack of revision control is deal breaker, you can't know what translations has changed (unless using external tools, which then makes the whole thing pointless) and even if you managed to get such info, there is no way to know whom did what, which makes manging any medium size team a nightmare. Ability to use translation memories and other "suggestion sources" is of extreme usefulness, I my self won't use any tool without proper translation memory support.

Other l.d.o specific issues include lack of proper RTL support (strings are always left aligned so if there is an intervening variable name it'll break the order of the whole sentence), lack of proper team management (ability to assign certain files to certain translators), and the fact that it is inspired by Launchpad Rosetta (to which I've only the most painful l10n memories) is enough for me to be reluctant to use it.

@khaledhosny

But then again, the fact is all translation is moving to l.d.o and it will not be optional. What do you suggest? Take Arabic to a separate CVS?

@khaledhosny have you expressed these l.d.o issues to the l.d.o team ?
The hebrew translators are already using it...may be we can ask them about their experience

We are not really using the interface on l.d.o at the moment - mostly importing existing .po files.

I was not able to filter out the signal from the noise on this issue. Can somebody summarize the issues at hand, or fork it to different, clean, issues?

Thanks for dropping by @yhager.
For the signl :
The problem we have here is that a lot of people suggested to move the translation to l.d.o.
Their argument is that they have done some translation work they want to share, but find it hard using the current workflow (CVS) because of some kind of lack of feed back from the maintainer. See this comment and this one.
The current maintainers say that most of the suggested translations do not meet the quality standards the project follows...
In addition the maintainers don't want to move and don't think they will move to l.d.o because of some issues. The problem is that l.d.o will be the only way to go in the future. So either they have to report to l.d.o issue queue and hope these will be fixed or (i hope this won't happen) host the translation elsewhere (in the future)

That's what we're at. I suggested we discuss the issues they have with l.d.o and have you hebrew team share your experience with us so that we can move forward !

@redben, thanks for the summary.

The Hebrew team currently is not using l.d.o's UI, but we do keep it up to date with the latest translation by importing the latest .po.

I am not too keen on l.d.o's UI myself, but assuming it will sync to CVS at some point, we don't have to, due to its import capability.

The Arabic translation, as promised, is now available on the Arabic translation project page (or here directly).

Anyone interested in improving the translation is encouraged report issues projects tracker, open discussions about relevant point an suggest ways to improve the current translation.

I want to use l.d.o to get and contribute to Arabic translations. This is a long thread & want to thank everyone for their efforts. I do especially appreciate the updated version of the dev version for D6.

That being said I wonder if the Arabic speaking community would better embrace l.d.o if it were using the Tendu theme which works pretty well for BIDI sites. It doesn't have to be the main theme, but could be an available option for users.

Can l.d.o have the latest Arabic translation added as an option for users? I'm a unilingual person, but have been working with a few mulit-lingual BIDI sites in the last 5 years.

There still does not seem to be any agreement here, so looks like not much possible to do on our part.

subscribe

now that the new drupal.org makes it difficult (impossible?) to find translations not on localize.drupal.org I no longer have a choice in the matter and it is time to give up and just move arabic there.

Gabor can you please add arabic to l.d.o?

Great, I've created the team at http://localize.drupal.org/languages/ar and made @alaa the initial owner / admin. You can add any number of other admins and manage group level permissions of people.

Please report issues as you find them! Your team members can now join and help import existing translations and work on more translations. Anybody can sign up for being a member of the team and they will be able to submit suggestions right away. The initial admin can change permissions of people signing up, widening their capabilities. See http://localize.drupal.org/node/616 for explanation on how. It is highly suggested to grant both moderation permissions to those who you also designate admins.

Welcome on board!

Thank you Alaa, Gabor !