Leonardo Fontenelle

If you use GNU/Linux, BSD (Mac OS X included) or another UNIX-like OS, keep an eye on updates from the time zone and daylight saving time database. Also called zoneinfo or tz, this database is responsible for telling a computer when to adjust the clock for daylight saving time (DST) (Wikipedia article). The database was last released this August 20, but recently got a recent update on daylight saving times for Brazil, Egypt, Gaza, Iran and Venezuela. In Brazil we are about to start a new DST, so whe need to update to the next timezone-data version as soon as it’s released! Contrary to most countries, in Brazil DST starts and ends in different days every year; we can’t possibly know when will DST start next year, simply because it wasn’t decided yet! Computers hate it. If you use Windows, Palm OS etc., chances are you’ll have to adjust the clock twice as frequently: when the DST starts/ends, and when the computer thinks it starts/ends. Free software can be diffent, but for that we need really updated DST information.

(more…)

Translating software is much simpler than translating literature, but it still provides translators some dilemmas. Information technology is full of English expressions which other cultures assimilated to some degree, even if sometimes there are proper expressions in the native language. Free software translators (at least the Brazilian ones) recurrently discuss about whether to adopt an English word, hence I decided to do some research on the subject.

(more…)

Finally, I’m back! I had other responsibilities, like researching on the effectiveness of the Family Health Strategy in the city I work for, and presenting the poster in the 2nd Paulista Congress of Family and Community Medicine. The last weekend I managed to dedicate myself to free software, but reviewing the GNOME translation to Brazilian Portuguese took all of my spare time, and it got worse Sunday when Og Maciel delivered the GNOME 2.20 release notes translation, with Kurt Kraut and Vladimir Melo.

I should reestablish the weekly periodicity, which increased sensibly the quality (and hits) of my articles. But I’m also planning on software improvements: besides updating WordPress and the Gengo plugin, I should internationalize the Aqueous Lite theme, and exchange the social bookmarking plug-in. So I ask you, estimate readers: what do you use? Digg? Del.icio.us? Ma.gnolia? …?

Paulo Zottolo, president of Philips in Latin America, declared recently that we shouldn’t think Brazil is a Piauí, in the sense that it doesn’t matter; no one would mind if Piauí stopped existing. The scoff caused the company to be boycotted by in the state by Armazém Paraíba and other large department stores. Paulo Zottolo was repudiated by the state governor, Wellington Dias, and many other politicians, as well as students, even from other states. Ivete Sangalo, famous singer and Philips poster girl, didn’t make comments on the controversy.

(more…)

Dwayne Bailey released the day before yesterday the new version of the gettext message catalog syntax highlight for Vim. This new version restricts the spell checking to the translated messages, i. e., the new script stops Vim from marking the rest of the PO file as incorrect (original messages, msgid and msgstr etc.). Now it’s worth paying attention when Vim says the word is misspelled!

(more…)

My colleagues know I do more revision than translation work. I’d rather be translating, but it’s important for the translators’ motivation that their work receive the due attention, i. e. that their translations be reviewed and committed as soon as possible. This article describes my routine as a member of the Brazilian GNOME translation team.

(more…)

Today there was another release of GnuCash, a free software for finance management for Small Office and Home Office. Like the previous one, this version has few new resources, maybe because it’s quite complete. While version 2.0 was marked by the update to GTK+ 2, GnuCash 2.2’s differential is the port for Windows.

(more…)

The title is a parody of Bruno Boaventura’s wedding announcement. Each culture has its own date format, which impairs international communication, and sometimes even local communication.

(more…)

If you care about l10n (localization), i18n (internationalization) and translation, you must subscribe to Planet i18n, aggregated by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Wouter Bolsterlee, thank you for the tip!

In two weeks begins GUADEC, the largest international GNOME conference. I won’t be able to participate, by I leave two suggestions:

• Og Maciel’s talk about collaboration between translation teams. The collaboration between the Brazilian Ubuntu and GNOME translation teams has been quite successful, and I hope it happens again inside and outside Brazil.
• A tutorial about localization no GNOME. It’s translation on GNOME Love Day!