Comments on: Politics of localization

By: OMG

OMG — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:51:29 +0000

Can anyone find me a single Firefox Basque user who is not native in Castilian? or French? A single Frisian user who is not native in Danish? A single New Aramaic user who is not native in English? A single Irish user who is not native in English? A single New Norwegian user who is not native in Bokmal? (and the list will soon include Kurdish…)

What IS the reason these translations exist? I understand it’s not intended to be a political statement from Mozilla, but it certainly is by those who made and submitted the translations. Mozilla is just naive and letting the nationalists abuse it.

By: marcoos

marcoos — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 19:02:37 +0000

Erdinc: Just one thing I’d like to add to what Michael wrote… As some Kurds support the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan guerilla, the Kurdish language should be banned or even deemed “non-existant”?

(Oh, and am I a terrorist by saying that? I remember your government imprisoned an MP just for saying that both of your nations should live in peace and democracy)

By: Michael V.

Michael V. — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:00:02 +0000

Erdinc,

Being a Mozilla contributor I HIGHLY doubt the decision to support Kurdish was political. It was likely the case that someone who was bi-lingual in Kurdish volunteered his time to translate Firefox into Kurdish. Thats how it is with many other translations.

Most of the terrorists to America and its allies speak Arabic but we don’t ban Arabic from Firefox, because that would just harm the freedom and accessibility of the web that Mozilla is all about. If another country hated Turkey and wanted us to remove the Turkish language Firefox, should we listen to them?

I’m sorry you feel this way and I understand your position but I (and I’m sure many others) oppose censoring Firefox in any way. People who speak Kurdish have as much of a right to use Firefox and the web as people who speak Turkish, Arabic or English.

By: Erdinc AKAN

Erdinc AKAN — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:58:17 +0000

You have to understand Turkish people. We are suffering from a terrorist organization since August 15, 1984 that named PKK which is a abbreviation of “Partiye Karkere Kurdistan”, translates into “Kurdistan Workers’ Party”. Because of this terrorist organization, we are very sentive everytihng about Kurds, and Kurdish people. We don’t hate Kurds, nor we don’t like them. We are feeling the same as you feel as an american or european resident to Middle East people after 9-11 and the following terrorist attacs. But we don’t behave Kurdish people, like you behave Middle East people.

If you ask me, I’m not comfortable about Firefox supporting Kurdish language, this might be an (and likely) political act, and I don’t want my browser to be a toy of politicians.

If you want to know why we are so sensitive, please check this site http://pkk.ataturk.org/ or do a google search on pkk.

We are just very sensitive, thats all.

Ps:sorry for my poor English writing capabilities.

By: 香港公司注册

香港公司注册 — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 02:49:23 +0000

Why not?I don’t think it is bad thing,if you mean volunteers must be rewarded?

By: IAn McKellar

IAn McKellar — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:07:24 +0000

If we want to really lose all our Turkish users someone should do an Armenian Genocide translation. “&openFileCmd.label;” translates too “stop making me march through the desert!”.

I remember GNOME having to decide on a policy for flags because there were issues shipping the Taiwanese flag associated with the traditional Chinese translation to mainland China.