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Facing this internationalization effort, a few users expressed their
concerns. Some of these doubts are presented and discussed, here.
- Smaller groups
Some languages are not spoken by a very large number of people, so people
speaking them sometimes consider that there may not be all that much
demand such versions of free software packages. Moreover, many people
being into computers, in some countries, generally seem to prefer
English versions of their software.
On the other end, people might enjoy their own language a lot, and be
very motivated at providing to themselves the pleasure of having their
beloved free software speaking their mother tongue. They do themselves
a personal favor, and do not pay that much attention to the number of
people beneficiating of their work.
- Misinterpretation
Other users are shy to push forward their own language, seeing in this
some kind of misplaced propaganda. Someone thought there must be some
users of the language over the networks pestering other people with it.
But any spoken language is worth localization, because there are
people behind the language for whom the language is important and
dear to their hearts.
- Odd translations
The biggest problem is to find the right translations so that
everybody can understand the messages. Translations are usually a
little odd. Some people get used to English, to the extent they may
find translations into their own language "rather pushy, obnoxious
and sometimes even hilarious." As a French speaking man, I have
the experience of those instruction manuals for goods, so poorly
translated in French in Korea or Taiwan...
The fact is that we sometimes have to create a kind of national
computer culture, and this is not easy without the collaboration of
many people liking their mother tongue. This is why translations are
better achieved by people knowing and loving their own language, and
ready to work together at improving the results they obtain.
- Dependencies over the GPL
Some people wonder if using GNU
gettext necessarily brings their package
under the protective wing of the GNU General Public License, when they
do not want to make their program free, or want other kinds of freedom.
The simplest answer is yes.
The mere marking of localizable strings in a package, or conditional
inclusion of a few lines for initialization, is not really including
GPL'ed code. However, the localization routines themselves are under
the GPL and would bring the remainder of the package under the GPL
if they were distributed with it. So, I presume that, for those
for which this is a problem, it could be circumvented by letting to
the end installers the burden of assembling a package prepared for
localization, but not providing the localization routines themselves.
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