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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 18/08/2017 11:12,
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:kangazab@douanes.cd">kangazab@douanes.cd</a> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:f43cd3d59e36bbfada42c0adae0a8954@douanes.cd">Cher Tous,
<br>
<br>
Etant donné que la plateforme AFNOG a une vocation continentale,
je suggère que le contenu publié sur son site web, ses atéliers,
ses conférences soient entièrement traduit en français, arabe et
portugais afin d'élargir son escarcelle d'interlocuteurs. Ce choix
des langues reflète les statistiques des locuteurs sur le
continent (en termes des langues officielles ou administratives).
En fonction de la quantité des données à traduire cette opération
peut s'avérer onéreuse, je propose que cette opération se fasse
progressivement et qu'AFNOG mette sur pied un comité spécial qui
concevra et mettra en oeuvre ce projet (et essaiera aussi de
dégoter un éventuel financement auprès d'acteurs de tout bord dans
la communauté).
<br>
</blockquote>
I read/translate your e-mail from within Thunderbird on my Linux
laptop. I highlight your words and click on the translate icon. This
works for me quite well. I can do something similar when viewing
non-English websites, or simply translate the whole site.<br>
<br>
However, I agree with you.<br>
I also think that (apart from AFNOG.ORG) the AFTLD.ORG website
should be properly translated as well. The AFTLD website has a
suggestion that the site is available in multiple languages but
everything is in English. <br>
<br>
The AFNOG site is HTTPS and IPv6 enabled - that's very encouraging.
AFTLD is not. Both could though have DNSSEC added (ORG is DNSSEC
signed), then both could have DANE added. I say this because these
websites (as well as AFRINIC.NET - which is DNSSEC signed and
includes DANE) are what others from the African Region should be
inspired to follow as good examples of how things should be done.<br>
<br>
----------------------------<br>
<br>
Some thoughts on translation. I developed the Website/Questionnaire
for the DNS Africa Study ( dnsafrica.study is IPv6 reachable, HTTPS,
DNSSEC and DANE enabled)<br>
<br>
The dnsafrica.study website has code that first looks at the
language settings that the user browser connects with. This becomes
the default language setting. The setting can obviously be changed
by clicking the appropriate language. We discovered selecting the
language by using words also makes more sense - rather than using
country flags...<br>
e.g.<br>
<br>
<div id="languages"> <a
href="https://dnsafrica.study/index.php?lang=en"><b>English (en)</b></a>
<a href="https://dnsafrica.study/index.php?lang=fr">Français (fr)</a>
<a href="https://dnsafrica.study/index.php?lang=pt">Português (pt)</a>
<a href="https://dnsafrica.study/index.php?lang=ar">العربية (ar)</a>
</div>
<br>
The system was written from an English language prospective -
because that my first language. Also, many Internet Terms are
naturally English, so getting any logic working there first seemed
(to me) to be sensible. Acronyms are possibly best left in English
(e.g. DNS - Domain Name System) though I do wonder how these are
taught at University level in other languages.<br>
How the website progresses from there depends on whether what (if
any) CMS (Content Management System) is used. Due to the nature of
the project - I chose not to use one but developed the framework
from scratch. I stored all "phrases" into a MySQL Database - and
wrote a simple admin front-end for the database - to aid
translations and the management thereof. Effectively in the Web
code, I had php code that looked like...<br>
<br>
// Preload ad-hoc translation phrases<br>
$tdata=do_mysql("SELECT * FROM translate WHERE language='$lang'");<br>
while($telem = mysqli_fetch_array($tdata))<br>
$translate[$telem['token']] = $telem['phrase'];<br>
<br>
-and used as-<br>
<br>
<h2 class='center'><?php print
$translate['MAIN_HEADING']?></h2><br>
<br>
In MySQL, 'MAIN_HEADING' would have a translation for each supported
language - such as:<br>
en - A Study of the African DNS landscape,...<br>
fr - Une étude du paysage actuel du DNS africain,...<br>
pt - Um estudo da paisagem Africano DNS,...<br>
ar -دراسة عن أسماء النطاقات الإفريقية،...<br>
<br>
...and so on. Arabic is more of a challenge - the website also then
needs to be written right to left (sort of). Look at -->
dir='rtl'<br>
We found our Arabic speakers quite happy with the finished product.
Perhaps they were just very forgiving.<br>
<br>
This mechanism also makes it very easy to then translate the essence
of the website into other languages - e.g. Swahili <br>
<br>
We left all graphics untranslated - though one could use a similar
technique.<br>
<br>
We used Google to do the initial translations and then had a native
speaker(s) per language to check and rewrite as necessary - which
made the whole translation process much easier/faster. From this -
we noted that Google had less issues with European languages in
comparison to Arabic.<br>
Because of the separate (database) web based system to manage
translations, phrases that were repeated in the website only need to
be translated once and it allowed for multiple people to interact
with it at their convenience. Each translator had their own login so
we could see who translated what.<br>
<br>
I'd be happy to share our code with the afnog.org/aftld.org website
developers if this will help them. Eventually, websites that serve
the African community could all be in multiple languages, be
accessible via IPv6, be HTTPS protected (Let's Encrypt is free),
have DNSSEC for their DNS along with DANE/TLSA records to
cross-check their HTTPS Certificate.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Mark James ELKINS - Posix Systems - (South) Africa
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:mje@posix.co.za">mje@posix.co.za</a> Tel: +27.128070590 Cell: +27.826010496
For fast, reliable, low cost Internet in ZA: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ftth.posix.co.za">https://ftth.posix.co.za</a>
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