I - General Information
1. What is the IIGS™ Translators Team ?
The best to define us is to look at our Mission and Vision Statements:
- a) Our Vision:
- To promote interchange of genealogical information between as many members of as many peoples of the world as possible and foster inter lingual and international understanding and cooperation.
- b) Our Mission:
- We will undertake to make translations of as many relevant transmissions as we can, for whatever purposes become relevant to the IIGS™, and between as many relevant languages as we can. To do this properly, we will need many volunteers from all over the world.
2. Who are the Translators ?
Just ordinary people :-)
3. I have read the whole FAQ but could not find the answer to my question.
No problem: send your question to one of the Translation Team leaders
Currently:
Jan Daamen ( j.daamen@wxs.nl).
Since these may be private mail boxes, which also get other e-mail, please specify that your message is about the IIGS™ Translation Team !
II - Translation Requests
4. Which documents can I submit ?
We'd like to answer: "anything related to genealogy". Unfortunately, we don't have enough volunteers to do so at the moment.
Therefore; we are sorry to restrict the nature of requests to documents related to the functioning of the IIGS™:
- Web pages for the IIGS™ site.
- Letters, e-mails or announcements an IIGS™ team has received or wants to send.
5. I need a document translated, but it does not fit into the categories listed above -- what now ?
- If you feel the translators team should do it, send an e-mail to the team leader (see question 3.)
- If your document is genealogy-related, there is a genealogy-oriented translation team outside the IIGS™. Send an e-mail to trans@genealogy.net with the following line as the body: #help
- In other cases, you can look for a translation service on the Web, go to the nearest university and have a look at their pin-boards, ...
6. What languages are supported ?
Currently: English, Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish.
This list does evolve. Come back soon to see updates.
7. How do I submit a document for translation ?
Send it to the list: iigs-translators-l@rootsweb.com. However, if it is rather longish, or if you have multiple documents to translate, send them to the team leader ( see question 3.) who will forward them.
III - Translators' questions
8. I have some language skills. Does the team need me ?
Certainly. Yes. The more the merrier !
9. How do I join the team ?
Subscribe to the IIGS-Translators-l (or ..-d) mailing list, either by using the subscription Web page or by sending an e-mail: to: iigs-translators-l-request (or ...-d-request ) body: subscribeAnd send an e-mail to the team leader (see question 3.), stating what languages you want to work on. He will send you the e-mail addresses of other people working on the same languages (language-specific teams).
10. I want to do translations now. Where do I start ?
Watch the list for urgently needed translations. And pick whatever IIGS™ Web pages you like. Most urgently needed web pages are, for now, the IIGS™ and the individual teams' home pages and the newsletter.
Please do not translate pages that do not wear the "language bar" below the page title or which are not situated on the IIGS™ web site ( URL starting with "http://www.iigs.org" ).
11. In what format should I write the translations ?
Text will do for correspondence and even web pages. For the latter, writing HTML will even be better; this way you will be sure any 8-bit characters (if your language uses them) will come through nicely. Best use a HTML editor (such as provided with Netscape 3.x Gold or Communicator and Internet Explorer 4.0+ ).
12. How do I translate the name of the IIGS™ ?
Leave it as it is (i.e. in English).
13. And the names of other organisations ?
Use the name mostly used in your language, if there is any. If not, use the original name or abbreviation, and add an explanation.
e.g.:
- "Royal Air Force" should be left as it is (the same for "RAF")
- "United Nations ( Organisation )" should be translated, e.g. to "Vereinigte Nationen" in German and "(Organisation des) Nations Unies" in French.
But for translating "UNO", use "UNO" in German (since this is the usual German abbreviation ! ), and "ONU" in French.
14. How about idiomatic expressions ? Puns ?
Do _not_ translate them word by word ! Translate the idea.
For puns, if you cannot translate them, stick to the primary meaning. (you can always add a note if necessary).
15. Help ! I am stuck on a translation !
If you cannot understand the original text (or what the author intended to say), ask the author, the submitter or the team leader (for a web page).
If this fails, or you have a problem with the translation itself, ask the language-specific team.
16. I have finished my translation. Where do I send it ?
If the translation was submitted, send it to the submitter.
For Web pages, translations should be sent to the translation team leader.
17. And how do I send it ?
By e-mail :-)
Best send it compressed ( this will use less bandwidth and preserve 8-bit characters ). If you have multiple files, you can send them as compressed archives.
As a compression program, use the one most commonly used on your OS. For those who do not want to use PKZIP or WinZIP (Shareware !), there are freeware versions of GNUzip (gzip) and GNUtar available for PCs.
Information about the latest versions can be found at
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/section-2.html
look for extensions: .gz, .tgz, .tar.gzAdditional for Windows 95 or NT users (vfat file systems): you can also use the tar.exe found at:
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/multimedia/video/mpeg/Berkeley/winnt/gnu/
You'll also need win32gnu.dll, available in the same directory.The latest version of Winzip can be found at: http://www.winzip.com/
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Revised: 25 April 2000