As I already said in some of my earlier posts, I see the localization as one of the most important things out there. Although I’m writing this blog in English, I do and always will support having localized applications and documentation for it, so non tech-savvy users could enjoy using them with flavour of all its features. Of course, as much as the application a one uses is good, the localization gets more on importance.

On the other hand, it looks like most of the tech-savvy people in Serbia do not agree with aforementioned statement. As some of you might know, I’m the Mozilla Serbia community leader, Web Localizer, Firefox localization peer and Mobile Firefox localization coordinator. Mozilla localization team allowed all lead localizers to have a brief stats on how many Firefox downloads we had last week, and what’s even more important, what percent of those downloads are actually downloads of localized versions of Firefox.

Last week I took a look at those statistics, and noticed that more than 60 percent of Firefox downloads from Serbia belongs to en-US locale, or the default one. That is something that worried me a bit, because we have Firefox localized in Serbian for several years now, and by now a one would expect that more than 70 percent of people in Serbia using Firefox, to actually use it in Serbian language.

I crawled the web a bit these days, and saw that many Serbian website’s web-masters tend to link to official Mozilla website rather than to Mozilla Serbia community website or even official Mozilla website in Serbian. Also, I asked a few of them if they could change the links with an brief argument, and believe it or not, always got the response saying that they DO NOT SUPPORT SERBIAN LANGUAGE ON THE INTERNET. Now, that got me amused, and made me wonder what could cause such a thing, and how should we treat it. So here’s the thesis:

Why would a man/woman from Serbia one prefer English over Serbian(in apps)

• People got used to English
• Some of them are not actually reading the whole strings, but can recognize them by reading first few letters
• Some translations in Serbian may sound weird or funny

So, now we came to the point where we should ask ourselves the following: “How to change that, or how to convince people that can change things that we should really encourage users to use native language?”. There is no simple nor ultimate answer that can explain the process as it should be done. The first thing is the root, and if we’re talking about Firefox(I am), than that is Mozilla. I have noticed that Mozilla actually cares about this, and is trying to promote both localized versions and local Mozilla Communites, to help localizers their “product” is seen. We can see a link to Mozilla Serbia local community on Firefox Support, Thunderbird Support, SpreadFirefox…

Another thing that we could do, is to advertize the localized version of our product to users coming from Serbia (using GeoIP tech) and are using Firefox in en-US locale. The pages on which we need this the most are the ones you get when you start Firefox after installation or upgrade process. That’d, in my opinion, significantly improve the percentage of usage of localized Firefox. Also, we need to spread the word, to ask wherever we can and whoever we can to promote the localized Firefox for the sake of all newbies that will and are using Firefox.

I’m proud to say that our yesterday’s event, Firefox 5 years celebration, was all good and pretty interesting. Although the hall we used for that party was not full, there were enough people to help us build the atmosphere we expected.

Also, what overjoyed me is that all attendants listened to our exposures very carefully, and were very interested in topics. There were a lot of questions after our exposures, and it was really good that we had enough time to speak to almost every attendant in person, and answer their questions.

Also, we had an live video chat session with Pascal Chevrel from Mozilla Europe, who was talking about history and future of Firefox, and everyone in the room seemed to like it.

After all the our exposures, we made ourself more comfortable by gathering in front of a main desk and just talk to each other, sharing our OS experiences and discussing OS promotion in Serbia. Everyone agreed that Open Source is the future, and that all of us should work on educating people in that manner.

Then we had a really nice time sharing Firefox promotional material, including bracelets, neckstraps, stickers and some Songbird T-shirts.

All in all, that was one awesome gathering, and we all hope we will do things like this more in near future. I would like to give a big “Thank you” to Vlajko, Bojce, Dragan and Uros, for helping making this happen, and for the great support they gave to Mozilla, Firefox and Serbian Mozilla Community. The best for the end:

Hello Milos. First of all, how old are you and were do you come from?

I was born and raised in the city of Niš, Serbia, and I’m 24 years old.

You are a contributor for the Serbian Mozilla Community. What do you contribute to exactly?

Mozilla Srbija, Serbian Mozilla Community, is involved in many different Mozilla projects. The very first project of our community was the translation of the Mozilla.com website in Serbian.

More specifically, I helped translating some well known Mozilla websites, such as Mozilla.com, Firefox support website (SUMO), Mozilla add-ons website (AMO) and Mozilla Europe. Furthermore, I’m pretty active in SUMO developing area, having successfully completed some quite complex and important activities with the Mozilla WebQA team in the last couple of months. Besides the above mentioned activities, I occasionally write a patch or two for Mozilla add-ons site, trying to help developers.

So in the end, while translating, I came across many other Mozilla projects, and got interested in them. Which is why I’m now actively participating in several projects.

How long have you been contributing to Mozilla?

My first contact with the global Mozilla community was during the winter of 2008. I followed events on the #xul talkings on Mozilla IRC server, as well as tutorials on the MDC site. At the beginning I wasn’t too active, but as time passed, I was more and more involved. A few months later I met Pascal Chevrel, who guided me during translations efforts of the Mozilla websites. From that time on, I’ve been an active member for the Mozilla community.

And what has made you want to contribute to Mozilla? Did you already have any contacts with Mozilla before you started to contribute?

The very first contact with Mozilla was Firefox. After having tried other well known Web browsers, I discovered Firefox and decided to use it for good. As a logical step after Firefox, I started to use using Thunderbird, and later Sunbird.

As I said before, I began by looking for some ‘online’ help with XUL. After the MDC website, I found the Mozilla IRC server and registered my nickname on it. Several days spent on the #xul channel led me to other channels on the server, where I noticed that many people volunteer in various Mozilla projects. After a few days well spent in getting to know the localization associates, I realized that the work of a contributor is very pricy and respected, and that really got me overjoyed. Furthermore, I saw that I could help, and that what I do will help other community members, so I decided that I would – to the possible extent – help the community, as I really value the time and effort other people have spent helping me.

While working on all these projects, I realized the value of all of this: the communities that work on these projects, as well as directly on the software, are simply invaluable. So I am very happy to have the opportunity to participate a bit in such great things.

While working on all above-mentioned projects, I got to know in more detail how the community works, breaths and creates great software, and I can tell you that I am really proud that I had the opportunity to contribute to its success.

I have heard that you have recently started translating the Mozilla Europe Website in Serbian. What can you tell us about this experience?

Yes. Few weeks ago, I began work on translating the Mozilla Europe website into Serbian language. As there are currently very few active members in our community, so far we have not had the time nor or the courage to initiate this project. However, we are now ready, and I hope that we will soon see the Mozilla Europe Serbian site on the way

Mozilla Europe, as part of the global Mozilla community, is really incredible. Although the goal of all our efforts is to promote and improve Mozilla products and websites, this community is very much responsible for the great success of our projects in Europe. In a world of information technology, much less attention is paid to spread awareness in smaller countries, and that is exactly what Mozilla Europe is trying to correct. All European Communities are equal, and all have the same privileges. What I find wonderful, is that a lot of attention is paid to countries from Southeastern Europe, and thus given a chance to local contributors to promote their country and language. It is very important that on these sites communities get a lot of the integrity to use their language and communities have equal opportunities to present themselves in the best possible way.

Is there anything you would like to add, a message that you would like to pass around?

I’d like to thank all contributors for making our world a place where this great community exists, as well as for honestly accepting new people that come in, and for trying to make things better… I would especially like to thank all Mozilla developers and all others involved in projects, for endless support and community promotion.

At the end, I would like to send a message to all reading this text that they should drop by, at least briefly, to feel the atmosphere among Mozillians, or even contact us. The goal of everything we do is to ease the work, dissemination of knowledge and friendship… and all are welcome!

Original source: Mozilla Europe Blog