Just for fun?
Yeah.
Fun is good.
Fun is a lot fun.
Damn.
I advertise that this room, this bedroom, this includes it.
Don't scare them away.
Yeah.
Okay.
I need to start.
Yeah.
Hello, everyone.
Thank you for joining my really lightening talk.
15 minutes I have left.
I'll be talking a very unstructured press.
I have a very unstructured presentation about what things I learned during the translation
of Thunderbird.
So if you don't see any logic, try to think beyond that.
There is something that you can learn from those slides.
Okay.
I'll start.
Excuse me.
I don't use translated software.
The reason why is because, you know, I come from Bulgaria, right?
In the past we the only way to get software was, you know, to steal it.
Okay.
Update it illegally from various sources that still work today.
And the only option was whether it will be in English or it will be in Russian.
So English, I like Russian, not so much.
So, but why I do all of this stuff.
I'm really motivated by the right of everyone to use the software in their own language.
We spoke yesterday at the box that, you know, their people like your mother or father.
They don't speak in English, but they still want to check.
An email from you, for example, or something else.
So, that was my motivation.
Ensuring that there are people who would like still to use the software in their own language.
And as I said, you know, I contribute to Mozilla and Thunderbird.
Currently, the Firefox desktop people or computers.
Let's say that they're used in Bulgaria.
They're like more than 130,000 devices.
Firefox around the world, 52,000, 53, close.
Thunderbird, like us of January 25, more than 20,000.
So, this is people who even if the translation is really bad, they still use it.
Right?
So, I've worked for those 130,000 people to make them happy and make them to give them the chance to be.
To be to browse the web or use their software or check their email.
And yeah, I try to localize Mozilla and Thunderbird from time to time in the last 15 years.
So, I got like the slides in a problem and solution mode.
So, the problem is that Thunderbird was translated and still translated.
By more than 30 people, they come and go.
They translate one string or two strings and they go away.
There's someone coming and translating vast amount of strings and that didn't just go away.
And when you look at the software in English, it looks good.
When you turn the Bulgarian version, it's really bad.
I mean, it is translated, right?
But it's not usable.
You really want to go back to the English version.
So, my mission to ensure people can use it is failed.
So, what we did and what we'll be keep doing is organizing a QA session, like software testing, saying, you know,
there is the software as bad as it is.
Try to go and use it.
And this is a way on how you can resolve bugs or not resolve bugs but report bugs.
If you have the knowledge to change it, there is a way to change it.
But, you know, majority of the people they just like to report bugs, right?
Not to feast them.
So, we asked already communities that are working close to us.
Media is that, you know, are interested in such discussions and they helped us to do that.
We got tons of useful feedback that we implemented.
So, this is, you know, the solution of our problem for the software being translated by many people with random knowledge.
The next thing we realize is that someone has their own version of what email is.
How do you translate?
Thank you very much.
How do you translate email in your language?
In Bulgaria and you can translate it in a few more few ideas.
You have like many languages, many ideas, right?
I don't know speak in Bulgaria now, but yeah, you know.
So, it's really nice.
But, if you see like different terms left and right, you have no idea how they differ.
Whether this is for email or this is for email, what does that mean?
And there is actually one interesting vocabulary or dictionary created a long time ago by brilliant mind.
And the idea was to force politely everyone to start using very unique and adaptable, you know, dictionary.
So, if you think about email, you go there and check how do you translate email.
Next thing is string by string translation causes, you know, but user experience.
It goes back to the one that I mentioned before.
You go log into the software and start translating string by string.
You have no idea about the context or you don't care about the context, of course.
You just, you know, translate some strings and didn't go away.
So, then you open the browser or, you know, you open tenderboard and you see massacre, something that is not usable.
The next thing I want to talk about is, yes, my awesome language is one of the few in the world with genders.
So, it's not easy to translate like that.
So, new email and calendar sounds really good in English, but in my language it's not so easy.
Because, you know, based on the gender of this world, this has to change.
And this is something that we cannot change.
So, you need to give your best effort to invent even new words if you have to in order to make this work.
This is, you know, one of the things that is, we still try to find a way to have to fix it.
Without inventing words, that are, you know, not so common to everyone.
But, you know, we are trying to do that, we translate, you know, screen-based screen, then look at the result in our daily version or nightly.
And try to modify and see whether we can keep this somehow sane.
The next one is, I don't have time for translation, that's the usual thing.
You know, I usually spend, from time to time spent, like a couple of hours or a couple of minutes to do that.
But then, at some point, I realized, I want to make this a habit.
So, if you see from August till end of October, I translated something almost every day.
Then with a few exceptions, I keep doing that till today.
So, one thing I saw this for myself was to go there and try to translate string-based string or two or three or four independently.
But, you know, to make myself to go and turn it into a habit, then it's really easy.
The first few days was really hard because, you know, I needed to find to mark myself a spot in that my calendar saying,
Hey, you have to, you know, authentically, you need to go to the website and start translating.
But it works.
And now, to say here, the time you spend translating something is the time you will never get back, because, you know, this is how life grows.
So, try to stay sane, try to work, because, you know, it's a, you don't own, let's say the, if it's an open source of the, you don't own it, right?
At some point, the software might disappear or, you know, goes into another direction and your, you know, work effort might disappear.
So, try to understand where the value is and to optimize your time.
A few slides on the Thunderbolt mobile.
Do you know Thunderbolt mobile? It's a brilliant version.
I have three versions on my phone. Yeah.
So, the first challenge we had was that when the move from K9 to Thunderbolt happened, there was a, like, a glitch in our community saying, you know, I don't like this move, you know, Thunderbolt will do something bad with K9.
So, I don't care anymore. Thank you very much.
So, then, you know, we started looking at the translation and the translation was really bad and it's still really bad.
They're like spelling errors.
Like really spelling errors that, you know, I, I still plan to fix, but I'm not doing it right now.
So, you can have time and knowledge.
It's in web late, by the way, this one.
You can go and try to fix it.
Then, you know, the labels, you know, when you're working with English, it's easy.
It's, you know, edited just for characters and in my language is 11.
So, when you go and open the dialogue, half of it is missing, like it's like, till here.
Done. It's really useful, really beautiful because, you know, you go, log into web late.
You see, edit, you just take this word and then you move on.
And then, you know, someone opens the interface and it's like, so we needed to go and review screen by screen,
menu by menu and find a way on how we can translate it different or shorten it somehow without using something that, you know,
it's cutting out the strings.
And again, translate it different.
There is no terminology, much even with Thunderbird because, you know, the functionality is kind of similar,
but it's translated something like with a different language.
And again, I mentioned about that.
It's really hard to, to start thinking about mobile if you just go there and, you know, click edit and do your work and then you move.
So, you know, translating, you know, mobile software is really about translating and then testing it from user perspective.
If you want to remember one thing from today, this is it.
Free software only becomes truly free when people can use it in their own language.
I actually ask the AI to read through all of my slides and generate me one quote, but I fully agree with it.
Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but don't trust me.
And whatever I said, you can go and verify it online for yourself.
And this is my network if you want to join these people, Gary, no, no people that's people, Gary, and please find me in one of those.
And if you happen to do the bad thing, my beer, the favorite beer is a treat, so I'll let it find me after the call and give me my beer.
Yeah, so feel free to connect with me. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
Oh, question, what?
Can I?
I thought we don't have time for two minutes.
Okay, to be honest.
I'll give you a chance, because you asked the last time.
You had some statistics about the amount of users using Firefox and the Thunderdutt in Bulgarian.
Yes.
How do you put that to get that kind of information?
Because in the integrated system, we never know.
If you use us, I use in EVH all of whatever knowledge.
And maybe we can extrapolate from the design for two weeks.
You can turn your head back, and there are two guys here from Thunderdutt project.
And you can ask this exactly question, or even more, sorry.
You can ask me this exact question.
Yes, the question was, I'm sorry, how the other projects can understand whether a specific software was used in a specific localization.
Yeah, there is a telemetry thing that is going on anonymous.
So, it's not the users, it's the number of devices, because someone can have multiple devices.
But it's an impressive number, one hundred and thirty thousand.
I didn't know that.
I know about my friends and my family, that's it.
But yeah, thank you.
You?
Oh, sorry, no.
Yeah.
And then, if you go to the board, something more, easy to read, or do the higher folks, people go with a distance and way, but both things.
So, that's going to be a part of my door and then that's it.
Really quickly, because times up, you can do both.
If you see something, you can report it.
And if you don't know how to fix it, you can report it with a bookzilla.
If you know how to fix it, you just have to create an account and start fixing it.
And if you have an account, without permissions, you're just giving suggestions.
You say, I think that the right translation is this one.
And you can do that, and then someone will be approved.
And if your suggestions are really good, you will get promoted into life with translator automatically.
Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, guys. Have fun.