Project Details & Presentation
In this presentation, I aim for 6 main things:
- To be as clear as possible to ease the work of the moderator.
- To provide proper information about the current project.
- To propose the logs of my personal work and interactions with this project.
- To educate the readers about
and the open-source culture.
- To show a model of transparency and accountability toward our community.
- To reach a bigger/larger audience of devoted Netizens.
Project Dissection:
PrestaShop is what we call in the world of the open-source development, a freemium solution. A gamer myself, I believe that most gamers out there know very well the meaning of freemium games/software. (1) But this is not the case here, because we are dealing with something totally different. I personally did not know that we can pair the concept of a freemium solution/product, with an open source e-commerce. First, to make things clear, let’s start first with the official definition of this platform directly from the company itself, and the information is as the following: (2)
“PrestaShop is an efficient and innovative e-commerce solution with all the features you need to create an online store and grow your business.”
And according to the website, this platform aims for one important thing which is “Our mission is to develop world-class eCommerce software through open source innovation. Together with our community, we provide software that enables everyone to have a successful eCommerce business”. (3)
Image by V.F - The website offers a very responsive demo version for anyone who wants to play with.
And this is exactly where things get interesting, PrestaShop does not have something really revolutionary compared to the other FOSS that I worked on. But by digging deeper, I discovered that this project has something that not all the projects I've worked on have. A big and dedicated, diversified and loyal community. The project on Crowdin has over 190k words; but still, people are competing me in finishing the translation of my own language, which I personally find very great and very encouraging.
Projects are always easier to tackle when there is a huge community around it. I am pretty sure that at the time of writing these words, strings are being pushed for my language. The sense of collectivism is really strong around this project, and I really wish all projects hade the same dedication from the PO. With approximatively 200-250k shops around the world, and used in more than 163 countries, with more than 60 languages available. (4)
This platform is really a big player in the field of the eCommerce industry. PrestaShop has also more than 300 built-in features for managing the product lists, payments, shipping, manufacturers and suppliers. In addition to this, it uses a web template system that allows users to customize their stores and add new features by adding the add-ons. (5)
One other interesting thing I stated above is that the platform proposes and I quote “A Powerful Freemium Open Source Solution with International Reach”. The company is really trying all the possible capabilities and services to enhance the experience of the users/customers, and at the same time, the profitability of the stores. To find our way in this maze, I will directly quote the point of view that the company stated about this model: (6)
"With its completely free solution that is available for download, PrestaShop offers endless opportunities to help merchants succeed! The company has teamed up with more than 80 industry-leading partners, such as PayPal and OVH, and offers 3,500 modules for payments, logistics, sales promotions, and more, all aimed at improving a store's features."
The Why:
The question of why will always be a question of the omnipotent nature of the virtue, genuineness, conviction, ethics, and value. Thus, I will allow myself to share the same convictions I hold most dear. Fare from the scourge, of the oblivion world!
The question of why I’m doing this project is quite hard to answer for many reasons when
launched a call for all the moderators to write a contribution to speak about their thoughts in relation with and the open-source community/culture. I started to write an article for my community, and one of the few questions that I tried to answer this question “How can we; as humans, conceive doing something just for the greater good?”. A hard question to answer.
Is doing something for free a key factor in defining a true dedication for a community or an idea? or it is more like a question of values and the amount of intellect and time invested to do good? I can argue that the architecture of the world of today can lead us to see idealism as some kind of illusion, a country for the weakest, for people who can’t face reality; yet, I have always wondered why it was so difficult to apply an idealistic model of working, it must be us! which lead me to my next point.
In my time working as a language manager, I came to a few conclusions that I already pointed out in my article. One of those conclusions is that the open-source culture is not really for everyone. Thanks to the few events that happened lately, we had an idea and a distilled conclusion at the same time. The neural system of
Theoretically, I am quite sure that any initiative based in an open-source environment, will always have the same issues that we are having here in
Well, why I’m here? I’m playing the role of the dragon's teeth (Drachenzähne) against those waves of realism! … This is just a granular contribution compared to the whole matrix of the open-source world.
the English language, to the Arabic language.
Proof of Work | Brain
"In this section, you can see some kind of logs I used to print each time more information was needed to understand the functionality of some concepts/terms/words. This will also allow the reviewer and readers to clearly understand the nature of some choices that I made in some strings, and hopefully, to encourage any discussion about the betterment of the translation if needed. On top of this, I’m sure that everyone can benefit from some information printed here. I actually did learn many things, and I hope the people who are going to read this contribution will feel the same as I did … smarter! The information that I printed here must serve only as a guide to follow up my translation issues logs. If you want more information about these logs, I suggest you check the links at end of this contribution."
In this contribution and future ones, I will merge the proof of brain and work to provide more consistency and avoid repetition and trivial information. Working on any project can be very hard yet very easy at the same time. I really believe that the idea of ‘this is easy’ as I already discussed before with a few language moderators can have two faces. One can say that the difficulty must take into consideration the skills of the translator, for if a simple person will do the same job, he will probably take much more time. The idea of time is really important to take into consideration but should not be considered as the main criteria to define the difficulty of the translation.
One can ask why I am speaking about time and skills, my answer is pretty simple, the current project that I am working on reflects clearly the ideas of time and difficulty. While the project is really easy, new variables such as massive cases of intolerance can make the job really tedious and time-consuming. Nevertheless, difficulty should not be scaled according to how much time was invested in a specific project, rather than, a clear and professional metrics is the best choice for this situation. As I will try to demonstrate below, the project that I am currently working on is really challenging because of the huge variety of words and style writing, I received lately the green light from the PO to do what I deem correct and necessary to perfect the translations on this project. Unfortunately, this is one of those easier-said-than-done things. I had to deal with many situations where completely accurate strings needed a revamp just because the overall coherence was needed. I will not lie if I say that the things were really confusing for me, because the project is really big, and over time, your translations and choices can be influenced, thus, a person will find himself that he translated a concept in two completely different way in the one same contribution.
Before passing to the next segment of this section, I want to highlight the importance of always looking forward to improving, before posting a contribution, I always try my best to minimize the intervention of the language moderator, to make the work less tedious and boring for him. We are human after all, but despite all the hard work done before a contribution, a few issues can be found, this really gives us the idea that we are all prone to error, and we need to always thrive to present the best possible work. As for the issues found in my last contribution, they are all cleared and corrected accordingly. Hoping that this contribution will have even fewer issues.
If anyone can have a look at my activity on Crowdin, he will see that the strings that I pushed are way higher than the strings that I am counting in this contribution, and the reason behind this is quite obvious. In my journey to uniform the use of terms and concepts, I had to un-approve many old strings, strings that are by the way completely correct in most cases, just to propose the translation again with the proper coherent terms and words. This is why I was sometimes in a situation where I had to changes dozens of old strings just to keep and improve the consistency of the new strings that I will try to translate in the future. Having many translators working on the same project will allow you to finish a project very quickly. But there is a reality that everyone needs to understand, as one of my friends used to say "We are all different, Each unique!", instead of having one story, you will have many, this is why it is always mandatory for the translators to have a look at the old approved strings/translations to sustain the same level of quality and coherence.
I did actually save the most important entry for last, while I was trying to find a solution to how should I proceed to present something that respects the overall coherence of the project, I faced many challenges, one of them is that terms can be accepted if used in a specific way. For instance, I can not say that the translation for (code) should be (كود) or (شفرة) or (رمز) in the whole project since there are situations when all the above Arabic words can be accepted. A clear example for this would be the use of (رمز) to translate (code) when we are speaking about “ISO” related subjects, and this choice is mainly decided because of the standards that are used to describe that term in that specific related field, which is the International Organization for Standardization.
Most of the terms that I dealt with are simple terms that just needed to be uniform. That being said, I will explain a few terms that I used just to explain their meanings. I used the word “Telemetry” to refer to all the measurement units such as (Kg, Pixel, Millimeter …). The second this is the concepts of Front-Office, by definition, the front office is “The Front-Office (sometimes also called Front line) refers to the front part of the company, visible for the clients and in direct contact with them, such as the marketing, user support, or after-sales service teams”, and the front office application is defined as “software that has a direct relation to customers. It provides functionality and data necessary to take orders, configure complex products and provide effective service and support to customers. It includes customer relationship management (CRM), sales force automation, customer support, and field service”. I did first choose to go with (واجهة المتجر) because I was thinking that it will be more user-friendly, then I retracted my decision and used the concept (المكتب الأمامي) because I did not want any confusion with the (front-end) concept. All in all, I am open to any suggestions regarding what I should use, I will uniform the use of the concepts as soon as the decision is made.
[The table below is only unique to the PrestaShop project]
| SOURCE | TARGET | SOURCE | TARGET |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISO 'CODE' | رمز | Back-Office | المكتب الخلفي |
| Front-Office | المكتب الأمامي | Document | المستند |
| Shopping 'cart' | سلة | Server | سيرفر |
| Supply | تموين | Telemetry | العربية |
| Prestashop 'theme' | قالب | Template | نموذج |
| Customer | عميل | Brand names | الإنجليزية |
| Addon | إضافة | country | دولة |
| Default | الوضع الإفتراضي | Carrier | شركة النقل |
| logs | سجل الأحداث | First name | الإسم |
| Middle name | إسم الأب | Last Name | الشهرة |
- More words/concepts/terms will be added if necessary in the future contribution, I aim to make the above table a reference for everyone who wants to work on this project.
Trivia - I believe that a difference between a low-quality contribution and a good quality contribution is equal to the time a translator is willing to invest genuinely on a project/contribution.
- The thumbnail image contains the logo of the project, the logo of utopian, and a DaVinci logo is available to use under CC0 on seeklogo.com. the whole/final design was done by me.
- I understand more now why the job of a proofreader exists, it's truly amazing how you can read a string 3 or more time to check for a simple mistake but you don't find a thing. Yet another eye will easily find an error. We are all prone to error. This experience also showed me how much the brain can be weakened, to the point where even the obvious will become hidden.
- No premium this time! back to the old school precision.
- I decided to put the glossary here to collect all the needed information for the LM in just one single place, this way, every contribution will be like a workshop on its own, providing information for all kinds of people.
- After a few adjustments and checking I am planning to forward all our work to the PO to give it to the other PRs, this way we can work with the same framework.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium
(2) https://www.prestashop.com/en
(3) https://www.prestashop.com/en/about-us
(4) press-releases/2014/10/01/internationalization-and-open-source-drive-growth-for-prestashop
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PrestaShop#cite_note-1
(6) https://danlargo.com/2012/03/29/the-freemium-business-model/
(7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_and_back_office_application
(8) https://ccm.net/contents/213-front-office-and-back-office
[F.W.count: Final Word Count] | [T.W.C.T: Total Word Count Translated]
| W.C | Untranslatables | F.W.C | T.W.C.T | P.% | C.T.F | Cont.Num |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
~1100 | ~24 | ~1076 | 8016 | 90 | 10-31/11-05 | 5 |