Okay, hi everyone. My name is Diana today. I'm a developer experience in
junior Victoria metrics and today I'm going to be talking about how the translation
make us happy or if they make us happy and how the organization builds actual
open source communities. A bit of myself, I'm an open telemetry contributor.
I'm a client of Romania, a co-organizer and I'm also the colleague,
CNC, a large board, neurodiversity group. So, before we jump on the next slides,
I wanted to just say that this is like a personal journey. I have localization.
I basically stumbled into localization because I was frustrated with the adoption
of open telemetry in my company and then I realized how I can contribute to one
of the most popular, cloud native projects at that moment.
I was like, okay, there is code contribution but there is also no code contribution.
So, apparently this is this thing called localization.
So, it's like what we can make no code contribution. Cool.
So, this is how I stumbled on localization projects.
One year ago actually in January, well right now it's February but anyway it's like one year ago
and I was like really impressed with how big the community around it is.
At least like in CNCF is quite, quite big.
In Kubernetes as well in open telemetry and probably others.
So, the impact on the community is really important.
It's important because why you have so much technical documentation
that appeal only to English speakers or obviously many of us speaking which as well
but they don't reflect necessarily or they don't motivate us sometimes
to understand the documentation behind it.
So, for example take Spanish speaking people, right?
So, the community is really, really big, right?
So, it's really big.
So, what if that documentation will be translated in Spanish as well?
Because I live in Spain, I'm Romanian by origin.
I was like trying to find out if there are any communities around the Spanish localization and there was.
Currently there are not so many contributors.
So, there's actually, let's say, constant contributors.
There's a very small group like actually three and they're like sporadic contributors
that appear every now and then.
So, little by little I found out as soon as I started contributing with the Spanish within the Spanish localization.
That there's a big community around it.
There's also the localization seats, maybe the deans are section of different
special interest group, obviously depending on the architecture of every project.
So, it could be other developer experience, it can be communication, it could be documentation,
you know.
So, it kind of flows around this kind of three, maybe intersects within this three main areas.
But it's also important because it drives up the developer productivity, right?
So, imagine, you know, you have a technical documentation that translated into your native language.
It will be probably easier for you a lot more appealing to start looking for it and be able to contribute or understand or give feedback, right?
So, maybe Romanian is spoken only in one country and, you know, how many times do I see like,
I don't know, things translated into Romanian, like very, very few times.
So, unless they're like super cool action movies or something.
So, for me it was like, okay, I'm going to start with the Spanish localization.
It's understandable a bit more about the project.
I'm not a technical writer, I never was a technical writer.
I come from more like a, sorry world DevOps engineering.
And then I got really into localization.
But there are like people that drive localization projects that are taking the writers.
They have a lot of experience.
They know how to deal with, you know, all the technicalities, just like the previous talk.
For example, and that's very, very interesting.
There is also automation under the hood for localization.
That's very nice.
But the reason I got attached to localization is the opening that it gives for new contributors.
So, new contributors, I don't know, let's say students, or not necessarily students,
but like many people that want to contribute to open source communities.
And they don't necessarily, and they want to do something that's more relaxing, right?
And for them, relaxing means, you know, contributing to localization.
So, that's one way to, to view it.
So, like I said, localization definitely drives into contributor diversity.
And I'm going to spend a bit more time around around that, not just because it's the language, you know,
that if the technical documentation would be available into your own language,
maybe that would be better for you.
But also about how can I say the accessibility, right?
The accessibility opening, the gates, let's say, not only to English speakers,
but to a lot more speakers.
So, for example, to give you some like figures, because we all like numbers.
The top, the most popular CNCF projects, Kubernetes, and open telemetry.
Kubernetes has an outstanding amount of 15 languages in total.
So, they're okay.
So, I'm going to go to the description around that this really, really huge.
And the open telemetry right now has reasons to nine languages in total, right?
And 20, 25, there has been a staggering amount of contributions,
a staggering amount of PRs, of commits, even like emerging languages.
So, only in last year, for example, we started to do two different special interest groups
in communication for Ukrainian and Romanian.
So, yeah, people seem to be interested from this angle to contribute to open source.
Right.
So, what I did realize when I started to contribute is that localization is just not translating a page,
right?
It's not just me going and being creative or on the translation of a document.
It's also about automation.
It's standardization.
So, this is something that's practically really technical under the hood.
The whole workflow, the whole CICD, around it, it's important.
And the automation is also growing within the community.
So, for just a given example, when I started last year with the first PR,
there were a lot of errors around the CICD.
A lot of, let's say, mark down or a lot of MPNM,
who you had to fix some errors, you had to do manually.
So, yeah, the whole software engineering part around it was still in the beginner phase.
But right now, just only after year, everything is very automated, right?
So, the effort of a contributor is a lot lower.
So, you need to focus only on the content, on the actual documentation,
on the nuances of the language, obviously.
What makes it different to pick a specific concept, you know, versus another concept.
And that's it.
But you don't need to, like, occupy your time and energy around the CICD automation.
And that's important, because it drives up the rise of contributors, right?
So, it drives up the motivation.
And it makes it relaxing, you know, as others of their engineers would put it.
So, what I've seen is the whole automation workflows, getting better and better.
Also, I've seen a lot of scaling around the documentation around localization.
So, like I said, like, open-cellometry had, like, seven languages in 25 new,
two new languages, and I'm pretty sure that this will scale a lot more in the future.
The idea is that localization attracts polyglots.
I already seen, like, here, two previous stocks, where, like, all the speakers were polyglots.
I myself speak five languages, fluently.
My German is not, it's a bit rusty at the moment, but, yeah, it's a lot more efficient.
If it's written into your own language, right?
So, I'm a lot more inclined to go to a page, give feedback on the comments.
If you go to France, the appeal to use French in a lot of context is really, really high, right?
So, you know, there's a conference next week, for example, like the whole quantitative day's promise,
is a conference that is spoken on French, right?
So, it's also parts very embedded in the culture, right?
The language is something not negotiable for many, many cultures.
And it also, I would say, should be treated with respect in terms of localization.
So, a little project that I did last year was, after I started contributing to the Spanish documentation,
realizing that I also speak another language as my native language Romanian,
that wasn't there absolutely at all.
And then, as myself, so how does one start in open source and in class native community around localization?
So, open telemetry community was very helpful.
They guided me how to, you know, do the initial steps.
Obviously, I had to find contributors because you need actual people, not just you.
And you need to motivate them, right?
So, once you start, it's not like, okay, I'm going, okay, all of you there with the website have fun.
No, you need to keep motivating the people, you know, expanding maybe the community around it.
So, yeah, little by little, you know, after a few PRs, we start to have fun.
So, this is where the fun in the title, you know, the happy part starts.
So, this is also work, we are just a few people, we are a very, very small group.
And I'm here with, like, in January, we're like discussing, like, one of the PRs.
Some of them are, after engineers, some of them never opened a PR or heard about GitHub before,
but they are, like, official translators of Romanian and others in between maybe me.
So, we're like discussing very important things about, you know, some CICD around it,
and then at one point something happened and somebody asked,
but how do we translate this expression? Like, like, unknown, unknowns.
Like, what the, you know, it's in Romanian. We don't use that, you know,
something really, really, like, never, nobody uses that.
So, we had to, like, make up or actually, here, the official translator helped.
She was like, oh, yeah, I know this because I found it in some source.
I don't know, in, you know, in something I read,
and then she actually gave us the right translation.
So, if you ask me, I would have said something total wrong at the same
the colleague that opened the PR, the software engineers,
if something totally gibberish, but, yeah, you know, so it really,
you realize with that fact that you don't know your own language.
And also, because many of us live in another country,
and, you know, we kind of forgotten our own native languages.
How important it is to give back, in, let's say,
from a culture perspective and be,
how can I say, loyal to your, to your language.
So, yeah, there's the sincere slug, by the way,
if you know somebody who speaks Romanian,
but anyway, you can bring them to us.
And this is me smiling. So, again, this is the, yeah,
the happy part, neurodivergent part of me smiling.
That's actually an open symmetry.
Anyway, so actually, they gave some contributor words last year,
which was really nice because I didn't expect that,
and so of us were parts of the localization project.
So, another colleague is a contributing to Portuguese and Spanish.
I myself support Spanish and Romanian.
So, like, super happy.
It's like, yeah, we did something good.
We started something, like, you know, we're like,
you know, popular areas. So, yeah, that's why we're like smiling.
So, yeah, but in the end, you have to continue contributing.
So, it's not like you're gonna stop.
So, it's, I'm looking at the long run.
So, that's it. How to start with auto.
So, you can also check the QR if you're ever interested in that.
So, what would I see from my perspective,
the same, I'm not a technical writer,
what I would like to see from my perspective,
maybe to addressing to you,
the community, there's more technical than I am,
around that better automated workflows, right?
So, a big topic around this is AI.
My memory shirt just comes up really a lot,
like in many, any special interest groups.
You see the bought appearing, like, you know,
in the meeting, like, yeah, you want to admit
the, yeah, in the meeting, I don't know.
So, and also many, many people that don't speak a specific language,
they come and they want to translate documentation
with a help of AI, you know,
but they never spoken that language ever in their lives.
Is that this creating the language or not?
I mean,
thank you, yes, I mean, you know, it's like,
oh, yeah, but I wanna make an open source,
I don't know, contribution, sure,
but, you know, be more personal around that contribution, right?
So, language is still something very, very important,
sorry, here, I cannot help, right?
So, yes, in some ways around the CICD, of course,
we all use cloud or whatever,
we all use Google translate in some parts
to maybe automate some things,
but still, you know, if you're speaking a language
and, you know, the word academy, you know,
you should be, you know, loyalty around language.
And expand the communities around the localization,
attract more contributors.
So, for me, I'm still, so, this is how my journey began
because I was very frustrated with the fact
that I couldn't do something code-related
in my company about open telemetry.
So, as a revenge, I started to contribute
to the localization, I know, quant 1.
After one year, I'm still thinking that
I'm gonna go back to the coding contribution.
So, I will have some free time for that,
I'll do that to some point.
I would like to see the community
maybe prioritizing localization within open source communities.
So, it's not like, how can I say,
there is maybe like a small stigma
around no code contributions, right?
Because, you know, us engineers or many engineers,
like, oh, this is no contribution to life.
Okay, I'm not talking to you, you're not really, you know,
serious about that, you know?
But yes, there is something serious around it,
like we all know that organization has a very deep,
also technical bones around that.
We should organize more specific knowledge transfer.
So, this is what I noticed with my little group.
That is very important to have regular meetings.
It's very important to create best practices.
I create some best practices, for example,
how to commit a PR from eight to z.
How to do the whole workflow for Romanian.
That exists also in Spanish and many other languages.
But it's important for, like I said,
people that are not software engineers,
so they don't do anything technical,
so understand how this workflow is run.
And obviously, add observability around localization projects,
because I work in observability,
and there's kind of zero observability around that.
If you're going to head up to,
so the numbers that were like on a previous slides
were taking from some GitHub actions,
and God knows some looker dashboards,
open signature community house,
but there's not a proper observability around that.
So, it will be nice to implement it.
And yeah, directly involved in non-English speaking communities
and providing feedback.
How many people do they actually click on provide feedback
so the documentation to that button?
Yeah, see what I mean, so yeah, exactly.
So, how if you're like, you know,
it's in your native language,
you'll be more inclined to hit that button and say,
yeah, okay, I don't understand that,
or this is rubbish, or any more explanation,
or you've made a mistake, maybe,
in the language, et cetera, et cetera.
So, I'm going to skip the takeaways
because that's, I'm running out of time.
The resources are here.
If you ever are interested to take a look at the,
you know, utilization around Kubernetes and open telemetry,
and thank you very much.
The slides are on the GitHub repo,
and I will also put them up to the talk.
Thank you.
Two minutes.
Yep.
There is a person that they're just,
how talking about their implementation.
How do you translate technique on board,
like, a world of infinity, like, magic trees,
but my next thing, that's a synology
for my Spanish friend.
I think you're always used at even board,
but you're not using anything in Spanish.
Well, yeah, I was also, yeah, okay,
so the question is, like, how do you translate
like specific technical words,
because many, many languages use the actual English words
for many technical concepts.
Actually, you're going to do a first,
the dive on the internet,
and find out that those words are actually translated
and words translated,
which is like, we're lazy,
and we're not using those concepts
because they're not cool,
but they are actually translated.
If not, you have to be a bit creative
and discuss with the community.
So that's why we have these regular meetings.
I never personally saw, like,
concept being talked about,
technical concepts being talked about in one of the meetings,
but there sure is, you know,
so even how you translate something that it's in English,
but you never use it in your own language.
But around the technicality, I also have a lot of doubts,
and sometimes I just ask,
either my software, like, my friends
that they work with this all day long,
maybe they heard about it, you know,
like, used someplace else.