[Erp5-users] Localization of ERP5 for China and Hong Kong

[LeungMiriam1]

Yo,

I've just tried with the ERP5 livecd. It's good work.

What actually attracts me is ERP5's abstract design model. It gives me 
hope that this will be a very promising software. I hope this software 
can help SMEs in China mainland and Hong Kong to get to the right level 
of computerization. Just like Liming, I would like to assist in the 
localization of the software for China. We can form a community in 
China/Hong Kong to work on this. Is there an online collaborative 
development platform that we can work on?

Simply message translation is not enough to attract any customer in 
China. China has very strict requirements on local accounting practices 
and taxation requirements. These are the very basics that must be 
supported. We must customize the ERP5 accounting system before we can 
convince the enterprises in China to consider using this software.

I would like to come to Nexedi in early March to look at a full 
demonstration on the system and learn how to set up the system. Please 
provide me a point of contact so that I can arrange my trip.

Miriam


On Thursday 03 February 2005 12:24, Liming_Do wrote:
 > I am glad to spend part time to ERP5.Could you evaluate the workload
 > of the translating and localising? Because I have full time job in
 > daytime.we need more peoples join in the work, if workload is large.
 > How did you make your japanese translation?officials sponsor or
 > community sponsor?

The Japanese translation was actually a test case for the message
translation system. A customer required a good message translation
machanism for multiple languages, so we set up the infrastructure and
demonstrated it with Japanese.

The translation itself is not very expensive, because you only have to
translate messages. The time required for a translation depends on how
much you are used to translating English to your language and the
number of messages. Since most messages are very short (like less than
10 words), for me, it takes 1 hour to translate 100 messages.

One problem is that you may sometimes encounter bugs related to Unicode
strings then you have to investigate the code. I don't think this often
happens now, because we have already fixed many bugs.

But, if you want to localize, say, the accounting system, this requires
deep knowledge and understanding about ERP5, so it takes more time.
Probably some training would be necessary for this.

Personally, I would recommend simply translating messages first. By
this, you could get used to how to use ERP5 naturally, and this would
attract more Chinese people. Considering that there are so many good
developers in China, this is a good starting point in supporting
Chinese business with ERP5.

YO
-- 
Yoshinori Okuji, Nexedi Research Director
Nexedi: Consulting and Development of Free / Open Source Software
http://www.nexedi.com
ERP5: Free / Open Source ERP Software for small and medium companies
http://www.erp5.org
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