Translations sessions at the 12.04 Ubuntu Developer Summit

So now it’s the turn for the translations post!

For all of you interested in helping and being part of the effort of making Ubuntu available in any language, here’s a quick list with an overview of the Ubuntu Developer Summit sessions we’ve got in store this week.

Remember you can register your interest in sessions you want to attend or keep up to date with by using the Subscribe link on each session’s blueprint. The links in the list below will take you to the blueprints used to define the specifications for each feature or goal. You can also check out the full UDS schedule.

So, without further ado, here’s the list of translations sessions:

• Translations roundtable – a roundtable discussion for all topics related to Ubuntu Translations. Add yours to the whiteboard!
• Localized ISO community growth – an initiative to raise awareness and increase usage of the localized ISO tools created last cycle
• Translations portal relaunch – relaunching and growing the Ubuntu translations portal
• Complete desktop Simplified Chinese translation – an effort to reach 100% translation coverage for the Simplified Chinese ISO in 12.04

See you all there!

App developer sessions at the 12.04 Ubuntu Developer Summit

UDS is here again. Tomorrow another week packed with content that will define the plans for a new Ubuntu LTS release will start, and this time around application development will be a prominent topic.

So for all of you interested in helping and being part of the effort of making Ubuntu a platform of choice for application developers, here’s a quick list with an overview of the sessions we’ve got in store this week.

Remember you can register your interest in sessions you want to attend or keep up to date with by using the Subscribe link on each session’s blueprint. The links in the list below will take you to the blueprints used to define the specifications for each feature or goal. You can also check out the full UDS schedule.

So, without further ado, here’s the list of app development sessions:

• Software Center roadmap – the feature planning for Software Center in the upcoming release
• App developer community growth – laying out the foundations to build and grow the Ubuntu app developer community
• App developer resources section update – the plans to update the Information Architecture on the resources section of the app developer site
• App developer support community growth – defining the roadmap for a community to share knowledge and provide support between app developers
• App developer tutorial growth – an initiative to create a rich set of development tutorials on the app developer site
• App Review Board update and planning – the App Review Board roadmap for 12.04
• Quickly 12.04 Enhancements – the plans to make Quickly better and keep pace with the platform
• Qt panel – a Q+A and all-round discussion session about the Qt roadmap and other topics
• Qt integration – a session on how to integrate Qt to Ubuntu development tools and APIs
• QtQuick workshop for designers – a showcase of the tools QtQuick makes available to designers to integrate their output in the development workflow

Oh, and don’t miss the Application development and the Qt keynotes on Tuesday

See you all there!

Translations and App development sessions today at the Ubuntu Open Week

Just a heads up that this week is Ubuntu Open Week!

Ubuntu Open Week is a series of online workshops where you can:

• Learn about the Ubuntu landscape
• Talk to some of the key developers from the Ubuntu project
• Find out about the Community and its relationship with Canonical
• Participate in an open Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu. (*)

I’ll be running two sessions for everyone wanting to learn more about either translating Ubuntu or writing apps for Ubuntu (or both!):

• WHERE: #ubuntu-classroom IRC channel on the Freenode network
• WHAT, WHEN:
• 14:00 UTC How to contribute translating Ubuntu – learn how to translate Ubuntu in your language
• 16:00 UTC Writing your first Ubuntu app – a very gentle introduction to writing a simple “Ubuntu rocks!” app, and explaining its lifecycle from creation to publication, with tips along the way.

(*) Mark is on vacation this week, but we’ll schedule a separate IRC session with him, stay tuned!

Making Ubuntu available in 50 languages

Quoting the Ubuntu philosophy, one of our  core values is to provide the ability for every computer user to use Ubuntu in their language of choice. This in turn is made possible by an army of volunteer translators, who throughout the development cycle and beyond, tirelessly put their translation skills to work in an outstanding feat to make a full operating system accessible to millions.

As we’re ramping up to the Ubuntu 11.10 release in a few day’s time, there’s another important milestone for ensuring Ubuntu is available in as many languages as possible: the translations deadline on the 6th of October.

Up until now, and considering the 80% coverage cut-off, Ubuntu 11.10, the Oneiric Ocelot, is translated in 38 languages, lead by the Slovenian team’s heroic effort of becoming the #1 team in the ranking.

Making Oneiric the best translated Ubuntu release ever

Last cycle Ubuntu was fully translated in 43 languages. I think this cycle we should be able to aim for more, and I’m confident that with everyone’s help we could reach the 50 fully translated languages mark.

There are a few languages that are very close to reaching the 80% translation level:

Basque, Latvian, Hebrew, Uyghur, Albanian, Estonian, Bengali, Punjabi

And others which might need an extra push to climb up the 60% to 70% mark to reach 80%:

Serbian Latin, Hindi, Indonesian, Tamil, Thai, Telugu, Slovak, Arabic, Belarusian, Gujarati

So if you speak any of these or other languages, here’s what you can do to help yours reach the 80% level and make it to the list of supported languages:

1. Go to the Ubuntu 11.10 translation statistics page
2. Click on your language to find out which packages need attention
3. Find those packages in the list of Ubuntu translations
4. Translate them!
• You’ll want to contact the translation team for your language or check out their documentation to ensure you’re using a consistent terminology
• They’ll also help you get started with translations and answer your questions

Note: the translations statistics are updated daily at 12:00 UTC.

More on translations

• If you want to learn more about translating Ubuntu check out our Translations quickstart guide
• If you want to get in you can follow us on e-mail, on Facebook, identi.ca, twitter and in other ways

And now for something different

If there is any web guru out there who’d like to lend a hand, help with the CSS and the JS code for the stats page would be greatly appreciated.

One cool thing I’d like to do for instance is for translators to, once they’ve clicked on their language, be able to click on a package that needs attention and be taken to the corresponding Launchpad Translations page. This only needs the corresponding rows in the table to be linkified, which is something I’ve been struggling with and I’m sure would be a five-minute job for an experienced web developer.

So if you want to help translators with your web skills, drop a comment here or feel free to submit a bzr branch. Thanks!

Looking forward to the best translated Ubuntu release ever!