Hi,
On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:04 PM Panagiotis Vasilopoulos
<hello@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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are intended to be used in small offices are outdated, inefficient and/or run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.
