[PD] What about multilingual Pd ?

[derek holzer]

Hi Marc, Mathieu,

I think I've been misiniterpreted on two fronts ;-)

Marc Lavallée wrote:
> I know, I know, life would be much easier with one OS, one type of computer, 
> one language, one country, one political system, and the rest, all matching 
> our own personal preferences...

To be clear: I totally support any efforts to internationalize PD, GUI, 
docs, tutorials or whatever. And I certainly don't want to advocate a 
"wouldn't it be nicer if everyone spoke one language" kind of paradigm. 
In fact, quite the opposite, I want more people in Brazil, Belgium, 
Botswana and Bangladesh using PD. And all in their own native languages!

> Frustated users can always stick to English;

In some ways this makes my point: that translating only the GUI would 
merely be a matter of preference or convenience for existing or 
English-speaking users, and not a workable attempt (yet) to bring the 
software to non-English speakers.

Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

> If some users don't want to have anything to do for the community then
> they deserve to pay big bucks so that they can rent a permission to use a
> competing piece of software on a limited number of computers. 

This is quite far from what I advocate, and in fact the exact opposite. 
Shouldn't a software, free or not, be usable whether the user is a 
developer or not?

What I have found from teaching PD to artists over the last three years 
is that the merging of the user and the developer communities in this 
particular case of Free Software often leaves the developers and the 
"power-users" as a kind of "hacker elite". New users, or casual users 
who do not actively follow the development of the software, have no idea 
where to start or to find additional material (tutorials, externals, 
examples, etc). This is a barrier to more widespread use of the software 
among (non-programmer) artists. Or do we ONLY want users who are also 
developers?

In Brazil, for example, not everyone has sufficient knowledge of English 
to dig into the docs or contact the development community. In Brazil, 
there is a huge popular movement towards Free Software in general, and 
many artists and artist collectives moving to Free Software for very 
ideological reasons as well as pratical ones. There are groups of people 
translating core softwares, but largely this movement happens in 
cultural centers on the periphery of the cities, and it all happens in 
Portuguese. Do we expect them to pay for MAX/MSP because they don't 
speak any other language than Portuguese, and therefore can't get 
involved in development? ;-)

I'm sorry to be a stick in the mud about this translation thing. I guess 
the main difference I have is a user-centered perspective, rather then a 
developer-centered one. At any rate, I totally support anything that 
makes PD more usable to a wider audience. That includes proper 
documentation as well as localized interfaces.

best,
d

-- 
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
---Oblique Strategy # 91:
"Infinitesimal gradations"