Ryan's Journal

One of the nicest things I've come across in open source software is BabelZilla, a broker matching Mozilla extension developers with translators familiar with English. The number of people who will understand technical jargon in one language and be able to translate into technical jargon in another isn't that big, and while it's a rather under-acknowledged truism in my part of the world that software and the Internet have basically evolved in English, it certainly isn't true that a lack of English language skills should be a barrier preventing the derivation of benefit from the various and sundry on the net. Playing matchmaker for that space is an admirable task indeed.

Within a week, twenty-one parties signed on to fill in translated strings in their locale for some of my work, many of them delivering shortly after signing up. Brazilians and Germans seem to be most active at this point, though I'm also seeing Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbian translators so far. Rock on.

Etiquette question: what do you for your translator to demonstrate gratitude?

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