Volunteers needed: open inactive sections for native-speakers of 9 languages

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As of this writing, the Gramps Discourse forum has 9 inactive language subcategories in the International area of the forum. They have been created but are locked. Users cannot post topics there.

That’s because we haven’t had a native speaker translate the “About” pinned message that tells users why the section exists and how to use it.

The idea is to invite non-english speakers (and users with problems that difficult to translate to English) to post questions in their native tongue. But it is a bit silly to invite them using English when they don’t speak that language!

We hope to also have a moderator volunteer too. That person doesn’t need to be a Gramps expert. But they must to be willing to help when Google Translate cannot bridge the language gap.

Here are the locked subcategories (and the number of views as of Aug.2024):

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The titles of the “(About the _____ category)” topics have been translated and a translation of the following paragraph has been inserted at the top of each.

Please excuse any poorly written sentences in this Google Translation. This <language> section is not open yet. It needs a native speaker volunteer to create (or translate) this introduction. The section will be opened as soon as that is posted. Join us in the Feedback area to help open this part of the community.

The Danish volunteer (Sanne Jakobsen) observes that Google Translate made this into an unreadable paragraph.

Translating the translation from several languages back into English made some things clear… Google Translate doesn’t understand “volunteer” as person. It sees ‘volunteer’ as “to help” instead. Nor does it know how to say: a forum is locked because we cannot even make the “Welcome message” readable.

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The first 200 characters of the pinned posting are shown (as a Summary) when browsing Categories in Discourse. This should guide users to solutions where English IS the problem.

The International subcategories are not intended to be translated duplications of the main forum. Instead, it is meant for discussions where English is not suitable or understandable for the user. And for issues directly related to adapting Gramps to a specific language and culture.

So the pinned topic should not be a straight translation of the standard Welcome to the Gramps Discourse forum.

Here’s a possible summary that could be translated.

Sometimes meaning is lost in translation. This forum discusses Gramps genealogy software in Danish when English causes confusion.

What are the other points that should be addressed?