Near about the beginning of this month Simon Paquet had written to a few folks off-list about working on localization of Thunderbird.

Since the bn_IN team hasn’t had a cheery experience of working with the Mozilla team, Runa had requested that a few bits be cleared up. These relate to documentation especially around processes.

Quoting from the mail:

1. A pointed list of to-dos (preferably sequentially) that would allow even a seemingly new translator to complete most of the work without constant supervision/querying

2. An explanation of the automated processes (e.g. the scripts to create local workable copies) that would allow translators to troubleshoot

3. Segregating the inherent processes (like translation of UI, web-parts, getting started pages) and posting them in the aforementioned list of to-dos as part of the standard template.

4. Clear identification of the tools and methodologies (like tinderbox, dashboard, litmus etc.) used and mapping them to the monitoring processes to be followed by the translation group.

5. Identifying the process of querying about context of translatable strings. ( I generally ask on the mailing list, have not seen many queries in there)

I haven’t seen a response about this from either Simon or others from Mozilla. And, I don’t really find that strange.