Re: Introduction

[unknown-1]

>Angela Oppenheim <address@hidden> writes:

>> I am an aspiring technical writer and was introduced to this
>> list through Karl Barry and John Darrington.  I hope to help

>> with documentation on the PSPP project. 
>
>Hi Angela.  I am glad to hear that you would like to help out
>with PSPP documentation.  We can use the help.  Thank you!

Nice to hear somebody offers help. 

I myself think a good introduction would be helpful. Something like "Starting with PSPP" or "PSPPIRE for dummies" (the last is most likely copyrighted).


And now a more difficult point. I myself would like to see the documentation in English in html form on a website. If it is available this way, the user can use the google translate 

service to have it available in there own language. It might be easy to create a webpage with this translations like:

Dutch:     http://translate.google.nl/translate?hl=nl&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

Italian:   http://translate.google.it/translate?hl=it&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

German:    http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

France:    http://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=fr&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

Portugees: http://translate.google.pt/translate?hl=pt&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

Spanish    http://translate.google.es/translate?hl=es&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

Polish     http://www.google.pl/translate?hl=pl&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

Russian    http://www.google.ru/translate?hl=ru&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

Turkish    http://translate.google.com.tr/translate?hl=tr&sl=en&u=http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node

etc.

There are some issues with this. 
- I don't know if this is legal. But I don't see which copyright is violated by this use. 
- I have no idea what the GNU people think of this. 
- The automatic translation is not good, but, it is better than noting. I know of people not able to understand a technical page in english and with this service they are able to ubderstand more or less what it says

Besides experienced users can issue a better translation to google. (I have no experience with that)  My impression is that this google service will improve fast.
- ......

The benefit is that the translations are available and up-to-date, the drawback is they are not good.

 

BTW In my opinion, the program itself still needs a translation by a human. 
If a PSPPIRE manual is avialable the translator can look in the automatic translation and use the same words in his translation of the program. (Strange way to handle, but a user wil be happy with a consequent use of words.)

I wonder what the list thinks about this.


Have fun