Everyone interested in participating to this effort should join the cooker-i18n@linux-mandrake.com mailling-list where will take place some discussions about localization in Linux-Mandrake.

Howto to subscribe?

Send SUB cooker-i18n in the subject of a message to sympa@linux-mandrake.com

The coordination of the internationalization effort in Linux-Mandrake will be done by Pablo Saratxaga <pablo@mandrakesoft.com>.

You can see the current state of translations at http://www.linux-mandrake.com/l10n/translations.php3

Currently Mandrake is the only, or has been the first main Linux distribution to have the most advanced internationalization support for/with those packages:

• ami: a korean input server, (also with Gnome support in ami-gnome package). With it you can easily input Korean with any client following the XIM inpuit protocol. For that you need to add in /etc/sysconfig/i18n the following lines:
  LC_ALL=ko
  ENC=kr
  XIM=Ami
  XMODIFIERS="@im=Ami"
  and configure your xsession to launch kinput2 each time you log on X11.
  The future distribution of Linux-Mandrake will automatically set up those variables at install time.
• xmms: The successor of the famous MP3 reader x11amp; MandrakeSoft has added full i18n support into the source code; that hasn't yet been included back into the mainstream xmms and therefore is a unique Mandrake feature :)
  Currently it is translated in German, Ukrainian, Walon and French, new translations are welcome.
• rxvt-CLE: a version of rxvt with support for Chinese (both Big5 and GB2312), Korean, and Japanese. With it you can use text based programs in any of those languages (mc looks really nice on it !).
• control-panel: that was easy, this little launcher has only two (2) strings to translate, the changes to the source were quite trivial :)   However, we are needing translation of the strings "File" and "Change Orientation" in as many languages as possible.
  Currently available ones are: br, cy, de, es, et, fr, gl, hr, hu, id, ja, lt nl, no, pl, pt, ro, ru, sk, tr, uk, wa, zh_TW.Big5 .
• kinput2-wnn4: a japanese input server, compiled to use Wnn4 as the kana-to-kanji engine. With it you can easily input japanese with any client following the XIM inpuit protocol. For that you need to add in /etc/sysconfig/i18n the following lines:
  LC_ALL=ja
  ENC=eucj
  XIM=kinput2
  XMODIFIERS="@im=kinput2"
  and configure your xsession to launch kinput2 each time you log on X11.
  The future distribution of Linux-Mandrake will automatically set up those variables at install time.
• Wnn-4.2: a popular kana-to-kanji converter; allowing to easily input in kana or romaji, and convert to proper japanese.
• fonts-ttf-gb2312: Two very nice chinese (Gb2312 encoding) True Type fonts from Arphic
• fonts-ttf-big5: Two very nice chinese (Big5 encoding) True Type fonts from Arphic
• ispell-en: Added british dictionnary to the English ispell files.
• ispell-sv: Swedish ispell files.
• ispell-sl: Slovenian ispell files.
• ispell-es: Spanish ispell files.
• ispell-eo: Esperanto ispell files.
• ispell-el: Greek ispell files.
• mandrake_desk: the Mandrake specific icons in the KDE and Gnome desktops; those have their caption and tooltips translated in a wide array of languages too (br, ca, cs, da, de, es, et, ga, gl, hr, hu, id, is, it, lt, nl, no, ro, ru, sk, uk, wa)
• locales-*: The locales definitions for Linux; we provide the most complete set of locales of any Linux distribution. If your language isn't yet supported mail us, we are very interested in providing to each one the possibility to use Linux in his/her own language.
  Currently supported languages: ar, af, bg, br, ca, cs, cy, da, de, el, en, eo, es, et, eu, fi, fo, fr, ga, gl, he, hr, hu, hy, id, is, it, ja, ka, kl, ko, lo, lt, lv, nl, no, oc, pl, pt, ro, ru, sk, sl, sr, sv, th, tr, uk, vi, wa, zh
• ispell-cs: Czech ispell files.
• ispell-fi: Finnish ispell files.
• ispell-nl: Dutch ispell files.
• Chinese input support: the Linux-Mandrake will include in standard the XIM compatible input server for the Chinese language xcin; it can input in Big5 as well as in Guobiao 2312.
  To have the chinese input support you need to install the rpm packages of locales-zh (if you haven't already), libtabe, and xcin (you can also install xa+cv which allows use of the xcin input server with programs not compatible with the XIM input protocol). Then you need to add in /etc/sysconfig/i18n the following lines; if you want Big5 support:
  LC_ALL=zh_TW.Big5
  ENC=big5
  XIM=xcin
  XMODIFIERS="@im=xcin"
  Or if you want GuoBiao 2312 support:
  LC_ALL=zh_CN
  ENC=gb
  XIM=xcin-zh_CN
  XMODIFIERS="@im=xcin-zh_CN"
  and configure your xsession to launch xcin each time you start you log on X11.
  The future distribution of Linux-Mandrake will automatically set up those variables at install time.
• ispell-ca: Catalan ispell files.
• ispell-pt: Portuguese ispell files.
• ispell-pt_BR: Brazilaian Portugues ispell files.
• ispell-br: Brezhoneg ispell files (currently included in contrib section).
• netscape-francais-4.70: French interface for Netscape 4.7
• netscape-walon-4.70: Walloon interface for Netscape 4.7 (not 100% complete yet; if you want to improve it you are welcome)
• netscape-castellano-4.70: Spanish interface for Netscape 4.7 (includes localized nethelp)
• fortunes-mod:The i18n support here is double: the fortune sources have been changed to make it read the LANG variable and choose, if there exist, fortune texts in the user's language. That is a feature unique of Mandrake Linux. The other thing we do is to include in the package fortune data files in as many languages as possible (currently there are some in Czech, French, Gaeilge, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish and Walloon; if you have freely distributable fortune files in your language you can tell us)
• ispell-da: Danish ispell files.
• indexhtml-6.1: the welcome page showed by Netscape on a freshly installed Linux Mandrake; it has been translated to a lot of languages ( bg, br, ca, cy, da, de, en, es, et, fr, ga, hu, id, is, lt, mk, nl, no, pl, pt, ro, ru, sk, tr, uk, wa). If your language isn't listed yet, mail us.
• ispell-ru: Russian ispell files.
• ispell-pl: Polish ispell files.
• ispell-fr: French ispell files.
• ispell-it: Italian spell checker files.
• ispell-no: Norwegian spell schecker files.
• ispell-id: Indonesian spell checker files.
• XFree86: corrected/added kbd mappings for: be, ee, il, lt; added bulgarian support (microsoft-cp1251); corrected Compose files for iso8859-13, iso8859-14
• XFree86-libs: with support for new locales for displaying texts in armenian, bulgarian, ukrainian, georgian, laotian, vietnamese, thai and a lot of languages using latin1 font encoding.
• XFree86-xfs: added various microsoft-cp125x encodings support (needed for Bulgarian in particular) to the powerful X-TT font server, wich adds support for True Type for all known font encodings. Corrected the koi8-u encoding. (if you know of a font encoding (that is really and widely used) wich is not included then write me !)
• cp1251 support: that encoding is needed to properly support Bulgarian; to enable it upgrade your XFree86, XFree86-libs and XFree86-xfs packages to version 3.3.5-8mdk or higher. Upgrade freetype package to version 1.3-2mdk or superior, and package locales-bg to version 2.0-4mdk or superior.
• man-pages-*: Mandrake has the largest collection of man pages in various languages: english of course, but also Czech (man-pages-cs), German (man-pages-de), Spanish (man-pages-es), French (man-pages-fr), Hungarian (man-pages-hu), Italian (man-pages-it), Japanese (man-pages-ja), Korean (man-pages-ko), Polish (man-pages-pl) and Russian (man-pages-ru). All those packages have been built with attention, compressed with bzip2 to save disk space (all man page viewers shipped with Mandrake have bzip2 and multi-language support), they include a special per-language makewhatis script and a cron entry to run it, allowing the whatis command to show you the info of localized pages too (depending on your LANGUAGE or LANG variables values). If you know of others please mail us so we can include them (BTW, we haven't the URL where to find korean man pages updates, do you know it ?)
• glibc: added the missing modules to /usr/lib/gcov; now iconv/gconv can also handle Armenian, Georgian, Vietnamese, and Laotian encodings, in addition to all the others already supported.
• iso-8859-14 support: that encoding is needed to properly support Cymraeg (Welsh) and maybe other celtic languages; update the same packages as for Lithuanian, with locales-cy 2.0-4mdk or superior instead of locales-lt.
• Lithuanian support: We are pleased to be the very first distribution to support Lithuanian language (which needs iso-8859-13 encoding support); to enable it upgrade your XFree86, XFree86-libs and XFree86-xfs packages to version 3.3.5-mdk4 or higher. Upgrade freetype package to version 1.2-10mdk or superior, and package locales-lt to version 2.0-3mdk or superior.
  There are still some things to improve before the support is perfect (keyboard maps, a console font)
• netscape-japanese-4.08: Japanese interface for Netscape 4.08 (includes localized nethelp)
• netscape-korean-4.08: Korean interface for Netscape 4.08 (includes localized nethelp)
• Spanish interface for Netscape 4.61 (includes localized nethelp)
• netscape-francais-4.08: French interface for Netscape 4.08 (not 100% complete yet; if you want to improve it you are welcome)
• netscape-walon-4.08: Walloon interface for Netscape 4.08 (not 100% complete yet; if you want to improve it you are welcome)
• netscape-castellano-4.08: Spanish interface for Netscape 4.08 (includes localized nethelp)
• acon: a package that brings arabic support in the linux console with it you can read/write in arabic on the linux console; the driver does RTL/LTR displayin, as well as the re-shaping of arabic letters in fonction fo their place in the word, and alef+lam ligatures.
• gnomba: made the necessary changes to add the i18n support that is now integrated into mainstream package.
• gnome-core: the spanish translation of gnome-intro has been done by Fabito of the spanish team; and will be soon integrated into main Gnome sources
• All the packages are built including the latest *.po files (the ones with the translations of the user interface) that are available, taken from CVS or directly from the translators if possible; thus ensuring to have the more complete translation of the moment, even if it hasn't yet been included in the distributed tarball of the program sources. Also a CVS based system has been put in place to add summary and descriptions into the rpm packages for various languages.

You can read a good explanation about localization, its meaning, its implications, and some vocabulary, from Mozilla i18n & l10n Guidelines page and the comprehensive Concepts of C/UNIX Internationalization page of Dave Johnson.

And you can visit this very interesting and complete site on charsets encodings: http://czyborra.com/charsets/

The excellent i18n HOWTO of KDE explains the steps to translate a *.po file.

There is also my page about Linux locales, which has links to several language specifics translation teams and info. And the (still at its begining) Linux i18n project web site.

There are also some projects of coordination between transaltors and programers that exist for some big projects, like for Gnome, or for KDE, and the mailing lists at li.org.