Full Circle Magazine FR

Quick Look At The French Translation Team Hello, readers of Full Circle Magazine from all around the world! Well over a dozen issues ago, Ronnie launched a new column in which space was given to various translation teams. If memory serves, the first one to be presented was that of Italy, and the second, that of Hungary. Every time we, the French team, put a new issue in French on the site of what we call the “v.o.” or “version originale” (the magazine in English), we would find that the Italians had gotten there ahead of us. I believe, however, that, since issue 86, ours has been the only translation available. I'm referring to the issues that we ourselves have published. As I write, Issue 89 will be coming out in French within hours and Issue 90 won't be far behind. But, again as I write, Ronnie has just sent out a link to texts from upcoming Issue 94 … To put it bluntly, we are roughly four and a half months behind the “vo”. Why this huge delay? On the one hand, at least in France, there has been a notable decline of people interested in getting involved with our team; and on the other, some readers have become far more demanding. For example, we get importunate emails asking when their articles in French (we accept them for our edition) will be published, or why they haven't already appeared in print. But far fewer saying “I'm ready to help! What can I do?” We have concluded that the Full Circle is no longer a community affair, but simply another item of consumption for consumer-readers. Still, I'll go ahead and say this, hoping that someone out there is actually reading: “We can use all the help we can get!”

Who We Are The super administrator of our site, I suppose you could call him our CEO, is FredPhil91. He is one of our “resident geeks.” It is he who takes care of all the work necessary to keep the site, which is kindly hosted by ubuntu-fr, up and running. And that is not an easy task. In addition, Phil regularly translates the Python articles and rewrites and tests the code in French. (Our readers are totally spoiled!) He is translating most of the articles on compiling the kernel, as well, not to mention some very difficult Linux Lab columns. We would be lost without him. Then there are two ordinary – as opposed to super – administrators: Bab, formerly in the printing trade, is the manager of our layout and has all the secrets of Scribus at his fingertips. Bab also does a lot of the proof-reading. He claims he knows no English, but has managed to do a few short creditable translations on his own or with the help (the hindrance?) of Google. Like Bab, I – AuntieE – am retired. I was an associate professor at the Sorbonne and taught French-to-English translation. I now do, and correct – old habits die hard – English-to-French texts. In a way, I think, I am also the PR person, or at least a one-person welcome wagon, of the team. If you write to webmaster@fullcirclemag.fr with questions, comments or what-have-you, it's quite likely that I'll do the answering. Although there are currently 101 members listed on the Wiki, there are only three who are truly serious about helping, month after month. In alphabetical order, they are d52fr, a relative newcomer, Ekel, the author of several articles for the French magazine, and frangi, a long-time pillar of our group. Although fairly new, d52fr has quickly become a mainstay of the team and he is doing the layout of issue 89 as an apprentice “scriber”. He also does many translations and much proof-reading. Ekel is a stalwart at proof-reading and frangi translates. He was even the sole translator of one of the recent issues! What's more, he regularly chooses to do the News: pages and pages of difficult text! Finally, like FredPhil91, he is a true geek and helps us out in that department as well. Obviously, we are all very interested in Ubuntu and Open Source…

How We Work One of our most basic rules is that each member does only as much as he or she can and wishes to do. Family-life, work (of course), and even leisure activities, come before the Full Circle. “Real life” matters. Other than that, when we finish one issue of Full Circle, we start on the next. First we work from the dokuwiki Recapitulation page, created by any one of us, using the texts from the Sources of the English version. Those who want to translate an article move its link below the heading “In translation,” and, when they have finished, they move the article into “Completed translations for proof-reading.” Theoretically, each translated article is read by two more-or-less bilingual people to make sure that the translations are faithful to the ideas of the original, and that the French grammar and spelling are correct. Each person who rereads an article puts his name down as a proof-reader of that article and, once two people have done so, the “scriber” rereads it a third time to validate it and incorporates it into a first version of the PDF. Once all the articles have been incorporated into the PDF, the scriber puts the first version (V1) on the Finalization page. And at least two of us, preferably three, read an article and put their comments on the order of “p. 26, col. 1, line 13, the subjunctive is necessary after “Bien que”, or “there are too many blank spaces in paragraph 3”. Ah, yes, unlike Ronnie and Co., we have decided to justify our text, which means additional headaches for our scriber. When all of the articles have been read at least once, a second version is brought out (V2) containing all of the corrections, some of which may cause further problems in the layout. So V2 through Vx must be verified. Once at least two people have reread the texts for grammar and spelling, as well as for layout, and once the suggested corrections have been made and verified, the final version, along with the sources, is put on the Finalization page.

During the whole time, when any of the team has doubts or questions, we keep in touch on our forum (driven by phpBB® Forum Software). We also go beyond business to talk about our garden crops, the weather, or anything that crosses our minds. It's on the forum that I put a first draft of the blog post that will announce the appearance of a new issue in French, for “comments, criticism and correction!” We use DotClear for the blog at http://fullcirclemag.fr. Every new post also goes to planet-libre and planet-ubuntu-fr. We obviously try to make the blog attractive and get good publicity for each issue. It seems to be working: Issue 88 was downloaded 1602 times, Issue 87, 1715 times, and Issue 86, a whopping 7330 times(?!). Each issue can be read online on our site (for example, issue 89 can be read at : http://www.fullcirclemag.fr/visionneuse/visionner.php?numero=numero88fr), and the number of cyber readers per issue averages at around 400. (For info, stats can be found here for downloads: http://www.fullcirclemag.fr/index.php?media, and here for on-line reading: http://www.fullcirclemag.fr/visionneuse/stats). If anyone would like to become part of our project, just for the fun of it, and because, as I said at the very beginning of this presentation, we need any help we can get, you'll find out how, here (in French): http://www.fullcirclemag.fr/dokuwiki/doku.php. The entire team joins me in thanking Ronnie and his team for their great work. Without them, we couldn't exist!

The French Edition From Start to Finish First, we create a dokuwiki page where all the English texts are available, one by one, for translation. For example, in Issue 89, there was an article by Ronnie on X-Plane in the Ubuntu Games column: The translator has divided the article into three parts to make it easier to see and to translate. The English is in bold type and the French is simply normal print. When the translation is finished, it must be read by at least two people, preferably bilingual, to check not only the translation itself, but also the French syntax, spelling and grammar. Once this has been done, the article is validated for incorporation into the PDF. Jeux Ubuntu 2 was translated by d52fr, reread by Bab and by me (AE), then validated by d52fr, the “scriber” of this issue. Version after version, each article of the PDF is read (or verified). All problems are noted on the Finalization page itself. When everything has been corrected successfully, a big red X becomes a nice green check-mark and we consider that the article is ready for publication. Here, we can see that Jeux Ubuntu 2 was translated by d52fr and reread by Bab and me (AE). The “scriber” (d52fr) validated it for the PDF. And above is our finished product, which we try to make as professional as possible.