translating web content

Hi webteam people,

I'd like to start trying to get some more translations of
web content available - I mean more languages, rather than
more content for the languages we have (though of course
that is always welcome too! :-)

Vincent and Maxym, you are the "translation masters" so far,
so I would like your feedback on this if you have time.

I would like to set up a procedure, a programme, for
translation of web content for new translators.  In the
last few weeks we had several people send email
volunteering to help.  Mostly I think they are interested
in translating the IDE, which I can understand, that must
be quite challenging and probably more exciting than
translating web content.

We happily sent those volunteers over to translatedfiles,
told them to sign up to users@translatedfiles etc.  I hope
they are now involved somehow with translations over there ...

However I was thinking, as a first, small task, it would
be good if we ask them to translate even 1 HTML page for
the website - an introductory, "welcome to NB" page which
explains a few key things, in their native language.  That
way we immediately have a page that would help that whole
native language community.

The Marketing team prepared such an intro page, and I put it
up yesterday, please check it out :

    http://testwww.netbeans.org/community/articles/welcome-template.html

This could maybe serve as a localised home page for the
whole netbeans.org site, eg www.nb.org/index_fr.html, etc.

For people who are interested in translating more web
content, I thought we should create a list of "essential"
web docs, ie pages that we feel are the most important
stuff on the site that a new visitor who does not speak
english should have access to.

By doing this I feel that if someone comes in offering to
help, we can immediately offer them some quick work which
will greatly help us.  They can then move on to whatever
else interests them - translating the IDE, or more web
content.

I've set up the skeleton of this process already, please
check it out and let me know what you think.

On the "contribute" page, I added a section about translating
and localising the IDE and web content :

    http://www.netbeans.org/community/contribute/index.html

That section links to a very basic intro page where I
include a link to the welcome template, and where we can
add "essential" docs when we know what those are.  Also
on that page is a brief intro and pointer to
translatedfiles.nb.org :

    http://www.netbeans.org/community/contribute/localise.html

Feedback and comments very welcome.

Depending on feedback, I think the next step would be to
approach all of our volunteer translators and ask them to
translate this new welcome template.  Then we can start
to list our other essential docs ...

Thanks.
-- 
Jack Catchpoole
NetBeans/Sun Microsystems
http://www.netbeans.org/