translation priorities

Hi everyone,

We're translating most of the Squeakland (Etoys) website right now into Spanish and Portuguese, with French soon to come.

You can help too . . . simply claim your language and reply to this message (to avoid duplication), then read the following:

http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-480

http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-481

We're also writing some grants now, some of which are aimed at our translation efforts.   

Given this, I'm trying to determine a good translation priority list, which shows the order of languages we want to focus on most.  Yes, we'll get translations first from people that volunteer, and that won't always correspond to the priority list.  But our time (and future hopeful funds) are limited, so we'd like to concentrate on the languages that will reach the most new and existing Etoys users.

To get the conversation started, here are the most popular languages in the world:

1. Chinese *

2. Spanish

3. English

4. Hindi *

5. Arabic *

6. Bengali *

7. Portuguese

8. Russian 

9. Japanese

10. Korean 

11. German

12. French

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers, and several other sources)

Perhaps more telling is this list, which shows the number of wikipedia articles, which may be a better indicator of computer and web use:

1. English

2. French

3. German

4. Spanish

5. Portuguese

6. Italian

7. Japanese

8. Russian

9. Dutch

10. Polish

11. Chinese

12. Swedish

(from http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php?sort=total_desc)

More direct to Etoys is our new list of "Squeakers", which has a graph at the bottom that shows number of users by country:

1. United States (english/spanish)

2. Germany (german)

3. Uruguay (spanish)

4. Brazil (portuguese)

5. Canada (english/french)

6. Argentina (spanish)

7. Austria (german)

8. Spain (spanish) 

9. Colombia (spanish)

10. Bolivia (spanish)

11. Japan (japanese)

12. Netherlands (dutch)

(from http://squeakland.org/squeakers/ ... add your name and country!)

Clearly, these languages merit special effort:

1. English

2. Spanish

3. German

4. Portuguese

5. French

And these represent known areas of Etoys use:

6. Japanese

7. Korean

8. Haitian Kreyol

9. Nepali

Three more to make a list of twelve:

10. Russian

11. Italian

12. Dutch

Do you agree with this list of twelve?   What would you add?   Where would you put it in the list, and why?

We of course want to have all languages represented someday, particularly the starred items in the first list.   

We're simply trying to set our immediate goals, given limited time and resources.