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The Golden Rules

These are the Golden Rules of localization direction setting initialy used by
Translate.org.za.  They are born out of the goal of wanting to have the
greatest potential impact on language speakers with localised Free Software.

There are three rules, software that we translate must be:

1) End-user Focussed
2) Free Software
3) Cross-Platform

With these basic rules in mind you can more inteligently select your software
targets.

End-user Focussed

The person who will most benefit from localized software is the desktop bound
end-user.  It is not the sysadmin or programmer.  These are the people most
likely to have less command of English while sysadmin have probably in the
course of their work had to come to terms with English on the computers that
they use.

This also means that you need to examine what type of software is generally
used by an end-user.  This would include: office suites, email programs and
web-browsers, instant messaging and even games.

Free Software

Again if you want to make the most impact on the most people you need to remove
barriers.  Free Software removes two barriers 1) being Free is the very reason
why you can localize the software with relative ease (No NDAs, etc) and 2) your
localised software is tehn available to a broad community with easy sharing and
community based sharing dramaticlly reducing the cost of aquisition.

Cross-platform

The reality is that most computer users are using Microsoft Windows.  Until
that changes a heavy focus should be on cross-platform products.  Thus you can
provide a solution to Windows user while at the same time providing an evenue
for them to move to a Free operating system.

It is much easier to provide a localised office suite solution that does not
require a complete retooling of the users operating environment.