[TYPO3-english] About translations of official manuals

[François Suter]

Hi all,

There is something we discussed in the last Documentation Team meeting 
[1] to which I would like to give more visibility by posting about here 
and also explain more the reasoning more clearly.

It is about the translations of official manuals, i.e. things like 
TSref, Getting Started, Core APIs, etc.

Before the switch to reStructuredText anyone could translate a manual 
and release it as an extension. The Doc Team tried to supervise such 
projects, but only very loosely.

Since the switch we have no new official way of providing official 
translations. This has been a discussion topic for some time. Eventually 
we looked at the near total lack of translation activity and decided 
that it was not worth the bother anyway.

What does it mean exactly (before some of you go ballistic ;-) )?

- anyone willing to provide a translation can still do so and release as 
an extension just like before. It is not optimal, but functional.
- it is just that the Doc Team will probably not involve itself in the 
process, although we are always available for support.
- *this is not a final decision*! Should there be a strong move from the 
community (yes, that's you) to regularly perform and update 
translations, we are perfectly willing to reconsider the current 
situation and have a new official process for this.
- it is still possible to provide translations for extensions, and the 
"Versions" switcher menu on docs.typo3.org makes it possible to also 
switch language (for example, see extension "sphinx" [2]).

I'm sure TYPO3 would benefit from having more documentation translations 
but efforts over the year have always been rare and far apart.

I hope you will understand our position and - again - please mind that 
the door is not closed definitely. We are just laying the topic to rest 
temporarily, because no one seems to bother (at least not enough to 
actually do something on a regular basis).

Cheers

-- 

Francois Suter

Work: Cobweb Development Sarl - http://www.cobweb.ch

TYPO3: Help the project! - http://typo3.org/contribute/

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[1] 
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/team-docteam/wiki/2013-11-21#Official-manuals-translations
[2] http://docs.typo3.org/typo3cms/extensions/sphinx/