I love my tablet because of the software I have installed; 3rd party software.

Living in Ausria, I noticed some of my fellow tablet users here are reluctant to use 3rd party apps, some don't even search for interesting software.

Why?

It's all in english. People here learn english at school but feel uncomfortable with the language; innovative software uses terms they dont know; an application not properly translated is seen as half-baked and will not be trusted.

Even worse:
http://maemo.org/downloads/ is english. Descriptions for programs both on http://maemo.org/downloads/ and in the appl.manager are. This is a barrier and prevents a joyful experience even for those who would understand enough if they looked up some terms in the dictionary.

Is there a way to solve this? Could maemo.org provide a platform for those who can't code, but would be willing to do translations? How could it be organized? Would there be a way to encourage authors to write code that can be easily translated? I know there are web-based GUIs for collaborative translation of software... could we integrate something like this in maemo.org?

(how many of you are native speakers of any language other than english and could contribute to translations? which languages are represented here?)

Hi Benny,
that discussion has been allready posted in here, but i think it is important that
NOKIA realizes that there are constantly new people joining the n800 or similiar
devices community.

If you search a bit, you will notice one conclusion:
at the moment there are A LOT of people thinking like you and what they
say is that if NOKIA does not change this, NOKIA will never ever be able
to hit the endconsumer market.

To say it in a short form: we have the hardware but the content is missing!

Grüsse aus Hamburg (D),

Carlos
www.mojocafe.net

Ouch ... I hate it when people start a thead about things that have been discussed before
Sorry 'bout that. (In fact I searched for some keywords (Internationalization, localization, translation,...) but probably missed the right ones.)

Anyway, I'm not sure how Nokia could/sould solve this. Maybe they put some effort in translating maemo.org itself (namely the http://maemo.org/downloads/ page), put you can hardly expect them to translate each and every 3rd party app that pops up. This has to be a community effort, just like it is with desktop applications in the free software world.
(And I wouldn't mind community-driven translations of maemo.org, either. I still think the less Nokia interferes with maemo and the tablets, the better ...)

Grüße aus Wien - ich liebe Hamburg. Geile Stadt!