Hello haiku-i18n,
Before I begin, this e-mail is going to be admittedly longer than usual, so
please bear with me-- I've marked the most important points with bold letters
and I've additionally put double asterisks, since bold letters won't be visible
on the public archive. If you would simply like to know the ways you can help,
the last paragraph should be enough.
I've managed to push the translation coverage rate of the Greek translations
from 58% to a 79% and I've corrected/proofread a very large amount of
translations over the past couple of days and tried my best to preserve
consistency. I've asked some people to help me out and I've also had help from
other contributors, because **I'm trying to complete the Greek translations
before the 22nd of May, 2020**, which seems to be the given deadline before the
final import of the translations to what's going to be the R1/beta2 release.
I've also been doing some work over at the Polyglot instance.
Now, I'm not mentioning this because I'd like to "humble brag"-- I'm just
mentioning this to illustrate that I have a very particular motivation for
getting a lot of work done in this small amount of time; **A disproportionate
amount of people in Greece still do not possess computer skills that can be
seen as "adequate"** (compared to the European average), according to studies
that have been published in recent years by various institutions, including the
European Commission. (I can recite those upon request) Many machines that are
intended to be used in small offices are outdated, inefficient and/or run
legacy software. This problem is effectively driving people, particularly the
ones with limited access to technology, effectively out of the job market,
while smaller to medium-sized businesses are always falling behind. **I
strongly believe that the Haiku operating system could help with this issue**.
This will likely sound very ambitious, but I believe that I could reach out to
people who write for technologically oriented Greek-speaking audiences and ask
them whether they'd be willing to 'give Haiku a shot' themselves-- I think that
proper and extensive support for the Greek language on a more "stable" version
(compared to the Nightly images) could help with this, or at least turn out to
be a viable solution to some people, now that many Qt apps are available and
that support for GTK+ apps is being actively worked on. **Hence, all of this is
the reason why I want to meet the deadline.** I believe that Haiku is an
operating system that people can get easily adjusted to. Even if I'm wrong, it
still provides guides and instructions that are reminiscent of that era when
operating systems and consoles shipped with interactive guides and instruction
booklets that weren't generally as trivial as they can be now.
**If anybody on this mailing list (e.g. foreign speakers, people who know
happen to know speakers of the Greek language, past contributors) can
contribute to Greek translations in any capacity, regardless of whether that
means proofreading, making suggestions, or referring other people to join in on
our efforts, I'd truly appreciate some assistance with the rest of that 21%,
and I'm sure that others would do the same.** I've invested a very large
portion of my free time during the past couple of days with no regret, I won't
be able to keep on doing that excessively. **There are 9 days to go as of the
time of this writing.** Even if my efforts and my goal won't bear the sort of
fruit I'd like, at least that will mean that the overwhelming majority of the
translations that will need to be prepared for the next releases will be good
to go.
Thanks for your attention and your understanding.
With kind regards,
Panagiotis Vasilopoulos
