[Typo3-marketing] RFI: Recommendations for Typo3 PR-work ?

[Daniel Hinderink]

Hi Sander,

>> In the end, the real reason is that no one volunteered to make these
>> resources who had the background to do it in english directly.
>> 
> 
> Not completely true; I started writing articles in English. Then they
> had my work TRANSLATED IN GERMAN without giving me any notice. It was a
> suprise for me that .edu has started in German, so mucht text for
> translation is not there so it could be done in a few weeks.

That is not a positive development, I agree. But Sabina, Jan Wischnat and
Claudio wanted to do it German and I concluded that we better had it in
German than none at all.  There we have someone from Austria, Switzerland
and Germany. Why is no one from another country on that list? I honestly
don't know. What I do know, is that I support the precedence of English over
German, but matter of fact is, that you don't always have the choice.

You did not find the time to finish the edu-site, Sabina stepped in for you.
That does not mean you are to blame, but the least person to blame are those
people that made it happen.

> I think we as a marketing group at least have to take a look in this
> point from marketing perspective. A lot of people, also on the other
> lists and during the T3tour, complained that;
> - the book is in German;

It will be published in English in march. We just couldn't have written the
book in English with this team. Again, no one else sat down and did it.

Anyway, the association was not created in Germany, because we felt that
"Germanisation"-tendency might be too much already. Like your mail proves,
that was good thinking.

> - lots of extension documentation is German.

Because it is programmed by German-speaking people.

> - the official association Bylaws are in German

That is the official legal language of the country it was created in (or at
least that part of it).

> Some people may indeed consider this as at least a problem for Typo3 (to
> state in mildly) cause all developers speak English, only few outside
> Germany speak German.

Well, Switzerland and Austria are some 15 million people and in France and
Italy the German-speaking dominance did not hinder TYPO3 seemingly.

> This is bad for Typo3 and not the way open-source works,

What makes you think that? Look at all the semi-national OSS projects, like
Mandrake or Spip.

> especialy not 
> for a CMS that is distributed in 40 languages in over 50 countries.

Obviously it seems to be easier to translate the backend than to create a
marketing resource for everyone's benefit.

> In my country we got loads of complaints about this tendency of Typo3
> towards German, also from the government officials, and instead of
> giving excuses I guess it's time to make English the official language
> as a policy. I agree it's nice for the German agencies and the German
> market but it holds back the penetration of Typo3 in lots of other
> countries.

My résumé is that we have a pretty good looking edu-site, which will soon
also be available in English, because someone from Switzerland (!)
volunteered to translate it.

It is all about doing things, not asking for them. So let's not be angry
about the things we have, but instead work on improving them or getting the
things done we don't have. If we don't have enough English resources, it is
because this community fails to make them.

> Let's go and bring Typo3 to huge success
> 
> René
(Feb 02)

Cheers

Daniel