For the Ubuntu Manual Project, we are aiming to have our final product available in over fifty languages. This means that we have to have a lot of translators and translating teams. Luckily, the good folk of the world see the importance of having a manual that’s available in their language to teach their friends, family and neighbours how to use Ubuntu.
These translators often work very, very hard and I think that sometimes the their work goes under-appreciated. Today I want to show you KanchiLUG, a group of people from the city of Kanchipuram in India, who actively meet up together to discuss and promote Ubuntu.
Recently, they have been helping translate Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04 into Tamil, completely by pen and paper before putting onto Launchpad!
One of the guys in our team let me know about this post the other day. I’m going to re-post some of it here because I think it’s absolutely brilliant that people all around the world can come together and work on something they are passionate about, and have loads of fun doing it.
This is why Ubuntu is awesome.
It is one of the 2010 goals of KanchiLUG, to bring a Tamil book for ubuntu linux. We goto colleges/public events to talk about linux often. We feel that it will be so helpful for Tamil students to learn linux easily with a Tamil guide.
Even, help.ubuntu.com or ubuntuguide.org have tons and tons of information, Tamil students gets tough to read them. It is a breeze to learn the things in mother-tongue. It is true. If there was no magazine called “Tamil Computer“, I wont be into this field.
We keep on talking on bringing a book for linux. We scared on where to start? fortunately, Ubuntu-Manual team come up with a great effort to bring a handbook for Ubuntu, written by community.
We got a chance to review it. Wow! This is what we need in tamil.
Discussed about this in #ubuntu-manual at irc.freenode.net.
That team is nice and they encouraged a lot.
ubuntu-tam mailing list members gave their suggestions.
Our team lacks in Tamil typing. Still, we have some 3-4 Tamil typists in our LUG. we planned to make use of them.
Today, morning 12 of us met in my home around 10.00 am.
The real fun started.
We formed 6 teams to translate 1 chapter each. we found it is hard to translate in pure Tamil. Decided to do our best in Tamil and use English words as it is in essential places.
Kidding, shouting, fighting for right word, seeking Tamil dictionary, pain of continuous writing, photo-shoot, poses… made the event joyful.
