Hi Everyone,
I know I have not been around much lately (Japanese Group). We are crazy busy at the moment.
We are about to put out a Japanese Ubercart and things turned out very well. I am more excited and pleased with Ubercart than when I first started. I really am amazed at how well they did things out of the box being that it is only version 2, it is a great module, and calling it a module seems almost too little as it is amazing.
We did have to patch Ubercart in a lot of ways, and provide custom modules for Ubercart to work well in Japan and this will apply to other Asian countries. Travis Tidwell, our new CTO at Alethia! did a great job with that, you can search his patches under the user name, travist. We do plan to submit the modules to Drupal soon (bare with me as we have a lot of work going on right now and its the end of the year). GMO is still in the works as non of our clients do not currently need it, and we have other projects that take a higher priority than building a module that is not needed yet. If a someone wants to use GMO and would like to support the cost, we are happy to get going on it! Or any other payment module in Japan.
So with that said, we will have modules posted soon, we plan to post all our work back to the community. Our hope is that some of the modules will make it into core.
There are some issues with the Translations of Ubercart and all modules.
First let me say thanks to c-nova, Clark Nova, for his version 1 translations, they helped a ton! We have also partnered up with Kyoko and Qchan and they played a huge role in making the translations happen. So thanks for this, the translations are not 100% but they are getting there and are pretty much ready to go.
The issue is that the maintainer, Mr. Takafumi (last name unknown), Drupal user name DrupalJapan, has closed off all applications. Well not closed off, but denying people for obscure reasons. I was told no because I am not Japanese (I am not going to go into how upsetting that can be). The main issue is that all the modules have now come under drupal.org and that makes every module closed off to add translations unless you are on the Japanese Localization team. Which right now I believe is a two man show. So while he currently has the power to do this, I have little faith in sending my Translations his way as there are many issues in the past and present with how he has handled Drupal and his position.
This leaves me with two options, we are going to try and work things out with the Ubercart guys, and see if we can get them submitted to the main project, if not, then I will just put them up on an alternative site or translation name.
So I know that some people want them, and I hope this can happen soon, please give me a bit of time.
This also brings up the bigger issue. All of the Modules are going to be held back now unless Mr. Takafumi will open the applications up or the Drupal board will step in.
All I can do now is hope to God that it happens one way or the other, anything is better than what we have now. My goal is not to make an enemy of Mr. Takafumi, but also I can't stand back anymore and just be passive about this.
So if you email me about this, we are really busy at Alethia right now, I might not be able to reply. But just know, that we are trying to put out as much as we can for everyone to use.
Regards,
Shaun Ward
Alethia Inc.
Comments
Good job!
Nice to hear from you and congratulations on the work. Can't wait to see it!
Weird to see that one man is holding up most of this good work ... hopefully he will see the light and open up the Translation process!
Congratulations on the good work of your team!
Congratulations on the good work of your team!
Unfortunately I also have a bad experience with the translation maintainer. You can follow here: http://drupal.org/node/605032
use the drupal.org webmasters
use the drupal.org webmasters issue queue http://drupal.org/project/issues/webmasters, and request new admins for http://localize.drupal.org/translate/languages/ja and argument that the two guys are letting no one in.. never seen a translation team consisting of two...
Synergy is something essential - New-Tronic.com
Raised but ...
Actually, Antoine did so two months ago and quite a few people chirped in on the issue queue but no results yet.
Feel free to chirp in also at:
http://drupal.org/node/605032
Yes we have
Yes we have, and I hope there are things in the works to fix things, but it's important to let people know what the status of this issue is.
Congratulations, Dokuro! I'm
Congratulations, Dokuro!
I'm sorry to hear about the conflict with Mr Takafumi. It seems like there's so much fragmentation in the Japanese-language Drupal community, which is terrible considering it is so small. I hope an agreement can be reached without anything drastic happening.
Is there an open issue or thread somewhere where you're discussing contributing the translation directly to the Ubercart crew?
The Boise Drupal Guy!
I know some people are gonna hate what I'm gonna say
I know some people are gonna hate what I'm gonna say, but before more people get involved I believe this should be considered.
Are you prepared to do what Takafumi is doing, with your fellow Drupalers? if he happens to quit? If the answer is no, and yet you feel Takafumi is no good to the Japanese Drupal community, I'm gonna have to ask that things be thought more logically before any limp attempts are going to be made at International level to over throw his dictatorship.
Ego's clash, and without definite leadership sometimes things slow down drastically, as is the case in some things I know we are familiar with, and the current choice seems to be "no" to those possiblities.
Don't get me wrong, I laughed when saw the stat 1 person doing over 5000 translations for Japan. And I'm a bit embarrassed to talk at other groups that there's no place to post any comments at Drupal.jp if anyone happen to want to relay a message.
And my conclusion has been for a while that until the answer to the above question is "yes we will gladly kick Takafumi off and we will and can provide compatible quality efforts in making Drupal Japanese distributions available at anytime if necessary, even do better, and we can prove to anyone that we can without a shadow of a doubt", I don't see why Takafumi needs to listen to any of us just because we want to get involved in the national arena which is tiny including the market in Japan.
Complaining isn't going to change anything. If it did, Japan may be facing disaster, and unless that can be avoided at all costs, I don't see why the Drupal Association should listen to any of us complaining, btw I didn't even get a response from him when I asked to join.
I think Drupal.jp is weird, but I also feel that we're not managing to come up with any significant aggregate effort (the entire solution hasn't even started IMO) that can replace him. Hope I didn't make enemies in making these comments, and hope I made some sense.
I don't think anybody would
I don't think anybody would be complaining if Takafumi were a benevolent dictator or always acting in good faith. Or if he were capable of translating everything that anybody could want translated himself. But that doesn't seem to be the case; right here we have this case where someone has approached him with a good amount of content in hand - translating Ubercart was clearly a substantial undertaking - and was turned away for unclear or unfair reasons. I think we all know how it feels when we work hard on something just to see our hard work unfairly rejected.
But by the same token, Takafumi has also done a lot of work for the project, which is why I think most of us are hesitant to say that he should be simply kicked off the project somehow. I agree that it can often be more efficient to have one "dictator" leading the project instead of a messy committee, but there's only so much that one person can do, and given that it's foolish for that one person to be rejecting valuable help for others - foolish, and not beneficial to the community at all. I hope that a compromise can be found quickly, but if not, we must consider what would be best for the community, and it's very possible that might mean somehow forcing Takafumi to either accept contributions from others or to step down as the project leader.
The Boise Drupal Guy!
Are you prepared to do what
I think you are over thinking things and might not have seen all the threads related to the problem.
Please have a look here too if you didn't: http://drupal.org/node/605032
It is clearly stated that we (and I) are not seeking for the maintainer to be kicked, removed, banned or by any other means deprived of its maintainers status. What we want is to be able to propose translation suggestions that the maintainer (even better if there was more than one) can and should consider to commit. The problem now is that we can't access the group so we do not have access to the submitting process. This is an effective lockdown to the server and many different reasons for not accepting our request to join were from simple logistics reason up to "not being Japanese" which is not something I believe should be tolerated in our community (Drupal and Drupal Japan) since most of our members come from all over the place.
We're not complaining just for the sake of complaining, we're explaining and exposing a situation we believe is wrong. I hope we can agree on that even though our means of action might be different. I have personally tried to talk with the maintainer by email and was basically told I would not be granted access. I was aiming for a solution through discussion and not using public channels, but it failed since the maintainer doesn't believe he needs to concern with us. Like you said, he personally doesn't have to listen to us, fine, but we're talking about an open community and an important system in this community so I believe that there is a need for this to be known outside of our small community.
If the general community decides this does not deserve any attention, this is also fair, but at least we need to let the information out since most of it is only available in Japanese.
my two cents
Antoine you may know, what is being discussed is at the root of the Situation in Drupal Japan, and I've been told (may be by the same people as you) that this discussion and conflicts have taken place in full scale in Japanese, I assume years ago. From the current situation it seems clear that no compromises will be made. And it is my view that the people I heard this story from intend to kick him off as maintainer, unlike you guys.
The only difference this time is the discussions are brought forward by non-Japanese with general interests in Japan, which could lead to a more International discussion.
And I don't see why there should be a difference such as a compromise if the discussions were in English in this case, only to offer similar proposals. Because we're Gaijin? hope not.
We need to come up with a force of our own (massive too), maybe even come up with our own versions of Drupal.
Clearly then, we can demonstrate versatility and talk to the Association. The reason, because he doesn't want to listen.
But until then, one is only trying to wriggle into the Japan Drupal translation national arena (someone elses work up to this point) claiming it's not fair, and this time a Gaijin mercenary group may be trying to make the difference. What if Takafumi was a 15 personel team who only uses one account. Then who will join and who cannot join. Then who's gonna take the time to judge who's translation is better than others. Then I swear in Japan there are going to be others who think and claim "who are you to judge?". Then a commission mess arises. Which is clearly demonstrated it will happen in Drupal Japan, IMO.
It's a no win situation for the maintainer, so I actually understand the decision that has been made. Though if I were him I would have tried to make it look like a team effort just to get people like us off his back.
The only fair way I believe is for those who are that motivated to be part of the national arena, is to be bilingual and to do the same homework that Takafumi is doing. Then make the claims. And as I understand, we're not even close. And I know those in this discussion at least don't have the time for it.
My two cents.
p.s. this comment is also in response to Garrett, but I think Garrett heard about this situation from different circumstances.
Disagree
I read what you are saying, but I disagree, also the translation structure of things has changed inside of Drupal recently. But I am happy that you bring up other points. Thanks for that, but I think this is a different story than last time and it also builds off of last time.
Just because last time came of no results does not mean that things should not change.
I'm not gonna comment further on this topic after this
I'm not gonna comment further on this topic after this, but you and I know we've only heard one-side of the story besides viewing the one person stat on the translations.
And you also agree to open up the translation efforts to your Ubercart project in Japan on a national scale, as it does seem you haven't even openly offered such opportunities even in your G.D.O. group? Think of the additional work... what if you get like 100 offers to join every month?
I know, you, Antoine and Garrett make total sense on this, and I'm sure a ton of Japanese would agree and disagree, but I'm just saying the only zero risk way to avoid a situation that is worse than the present is not the easier version of the way you're intending.
We couldn't agree to work on translations of a single module when Garrett got his server up, there may be many things we need to agree on in the groups such as G.D.O. Japan, making it a aggregate effort tradition before we go higher up, IMO.
Anyways, I am totally for you obtaining the Ubercart translation server rights or doing something similar. Anyhow I don't see how that is in disagreement to what I suggested?
We are a company that is trying to give back
This is what I am trying to do now, I am trying to put the translations up for review and growth to the group, also modules and more. At the same time, I have clients and a company to run. I can't just ask anyone to provide me translations and tell my client that I am waiting on the community to give me translations. I can work with people who are able to translate things, pay for that work and sponsor that work and then in turn provide that work back to the community for free for further growth and development. I think this is more than appreciated and I have provided this information to all the people who have contacted me. I would also like to post the translations in the right forum for people to work on them as a group.
At the end of the day, I run a company, and I have clients that depend on me. The community is of high level of concern to me, but there is a balance. I am the head of this company and we are young, so to give a lot of time to the group is hard to do, but I have always made an effort to do so. To give back to Drupal and other open source projects is actually built into our business plan.
Open source changed my life, in more ways than one. It is important for me to give back, but also try and protect the whole open source movement and what it is and how it can change lives.
So maybe that helps you understand where I am at.
Shaun
Is the translation good and
Is the translation good and working, no typos: < 5 / 100 strings. Is the translation understandable and reflects the Japaneses way of speaking / thinking...
Is the Ubercart translation bound to the core translation and uses the same vocabulary?
Has Takafumi yet brought up a translation dictionary?
Synergy is something essential - New-Tronic.com
@snicers: You bring up some
@snicers: You bring up some good points, but I believe this is a bit unrealistic.
First, if you read Dokuro's post, I believe 2 Japanese members (maybe more, but two are mentioned) were involved in the translation process so I believe we could say it reflects the Japanese way of speaking/thinking to some extent. I also believe that Dokuro's work with Ubercart is of the highest level of quality... just search for the patch they submited. Of course everybody makes mistakes, so please read on...
Second, the validation process you seem to bring up (if I understand your points clearly) is something that should happend on localize.drupal.org when the translation file has been proposed. Then, it would become the maintainers responsibility (and if possible with consultation with the translation group members) to accept or refuse the translation or part of it. The rejected part(s) could then be reworked and or just wait for someone else to bring a better solution.
My point of view is that, especially for Japan since English is not used for a majority of people, some Japanese, even if not perfect is MUCH better than no Japanese at all. and at least having all string translated makes it easy for any Japanese member to then propose a more correct translation. I believe this is the essence of the translation server way of working.
Has for having any rules to abide to before being able to submit some translations, I'm all good for that, but there's none or we do not have access to it at the moment.
I hope its good!
Hi Snicers,
I hope it is good, but I believe that it needs review outside of our team an our clients perspective. But that is a natural evolution of things. Submit it, someone looks at it, and says yes, ohh..wait lets change this to this. Then the product is put out stronger because it went through a team.
But I feel that it is a good translation at least a good base to start with.
Regards,
Shaun
Why I posted
I first applied to the group as a company, not as me. Let me say this, I don't think that my personal Japanese is at all great, but I have worked to create Japanese packages with other community members before on the Zen-Cart project, which is structured way different than Drupal. I found people that wanted to help out with the translations and I helped fix the core issues with format inside of the project but at the same time keeping it able to be updated. I learned a ton doing that, and what I learned most of all, is that it helps to have people from all backgrounds. If I spent more time with it, I would try to organize it more, and now I am taking what I learned there and trying to apply it to Ubercart. We want to work with as many people as we can to help them make it a better project. I don't want to be the person that forks different modules or language packs. Every module we make, I would give over to the core of the project if they asked.
Being rejected for a reason other than my nationality, I could have understood. But I was applying more as a company as a whole. Key point, I think the group would benifit from having a non-Japanese on the team as it would give them the point of view that Drupal comes from and help them to understand how to adapt things in ways they might not think of.
Yes, please. This is our goal, we want to open things up and get things going. Do I want to take Mr. Takafumi down? Not at all, I want him to open the group up, I want to be able to provide my Translations that my team comes up with. Having someone to look over Translations, I would hope more than one person, is important for quality, but having a bigger team of people that can submit them is also important.
Now, my biggest reason for writing this post, is I get emails often asking for the translations, and I have been trying to get them submitted to Drupal.org. So this is my final effort to make the issue public before I just post them on my site or something. I tried to talk with Mr. Takafumi, even offered to meet him where ever he was in Japan and sit down with him face to face and just talk. That was months ago. I will keep it nice, but he didn't give me any option to help or bring in Translations, it was just weird really.
So if you ask if I am willing to do what he is doing, that question is not really relevant, I would take it on and setup a team if the option was given to me but really all we want to do is add more heads to the project. My hope would be that we could be more like the Ukrainian team or something and have a D7CX commitment and have it ready the day D7 is out the door.
suggesting
suggesting http://l10n.privnet.biz/translate/languages/ja , the official Ubercart translation server hosted by RAK. I don't know the situation atm exactly, they are moving to localize.drupal.org.. You could still ask him at ubercart.org PM to get you administration rights.
Synergy is something essential - New-Tronic.com
This is closed
I have already contacted Rak about a month or two ago to submit translations. This services is now done through drupal.org. So this is no longer an option.
//sorry for all the edits, mind is working better than my typing.
Update on things
Hi girls and guys, (little ladies first action there, need more of that in Japan I think, not that we have too many ladies in the Drupal group here, but we have a few.)
Just a little update on things here. There has been a big change in events. Which I hope is the lead to some better things for Japan and Drupal.
@fuji - I guess you are going to see your question get answered and also you can be part of the answer!
As you can read from here: http://drupal.org/node/605032, and it links to other posts. Things have been changed a bit. I want to take the next couple of days and see how things pan out and talk to the other admins but I will post translations soon. I will post all that I have, which should be more than just Ubercart.
Things to keep in mind. First off, the translations are a 1st draft and done for a client, so things I am sure will need some change to fit a more general audience and it is not a 100% finished as some of the settings are not so easy to translate. But other than that, it looks like things are cool to go to start adding them. (@snicers - I hope you will think they are good!).
Another thing, I would like to point out the people who helped and how they helped. C-Nova gave us his personal Ubercart 1 translations (Thanks so much, such a boost to things!) and Qchan/Kyoko, worked with me to translate the untranslated strings in Ubercart 2. Qchan did a lot of the work, working with me to explain things and by then could provid the right Japanese for each string. It worked well to work in a group of two like that as he was able to ask me questions and be able to understand the function of things. Kyoko as well. Now is the next step, to pass it to the community and have everyone give their input.
Me and the other Admins are going to try to work out some structure for the group bassed off other groups who have really come together and done things well. But that is a bit off topic here.
So please give me a bit more time on this and I hope to have things up soon.
Regards,
Shaun
A Day to Celebrate!!
Yeah, today is a day to celebrate.
Very unexpected, and what was the question?
I wish us all luck, though it seems we need to get to work rather than need luck.
I look forward to finding out what it is that we wished for.
Best regards,
Scott
Ubercart Translations
Hi Everyone,
Well, as most can tell things are getting worked out. I posted my translations to the localization server, but it looks like it will take some time to get them through. So I have also posted a pack on our company site. I wanted to get them out before the new year!
Please feel free to download it and check it out. It's a work in progress.
Link: http://www.alethiadesign.com/japanese-ubercart-2x-translations
Modules to come soon, thanks for all the understanding.
Regards,
Shaun
Thanks Santa!
Thanks for making this available while waiting for the localization server to pick these up!
Looking forward to the modules.
Here's to Santa Shaun! :)
Awesome!
Thanks Shaun.
I'm going to give it a try as well.
I will let you know how things go.