Mozilla Localizer Meetup 2019

I joined Mozilla localization workshop on 9-10 November at Dhaka. It was nice experience for me. This blog post is for sharing my personal experience about the localization meeting.

Computer and internet is still is mystery for most of the Bengali speaking people. I always thought about them. If they could read the things in Bengali they could easily get access to the world of internet and other technologies easily and I always want to do something for them. Recently I started contributing on localization for some products of Mozilla. But why Mozilla ? Well , both , I and Mozilla want open , accessible web for all.

I heard about the localization workshop from “ bn_BD localization” Facebook group. I registered for the workshop providing my poonton profile and I was finally invited.

Jeff Beatty speaking at l10n meeting Dhaka

First day of the workshop was started with the introduction with Jeff Beatty in a video call who is the head of localization of Mozilla. He is a nice guy. He shared information about Mozilla . We had some guidelines for the localization from him. He shared his thoughts and some useful information about localization market.

According to the guidelines from Jeff Beatty , we worked on creating a single style guide for Bengali language. Previously there was two locales bn_BD and bn_IN, now both of two are merged into a single locale BN. Mahay Alam Khan from Bangladesh and Biraj Karmakar from India lead the session. We discussed on the common difference of styles and agreed to a point. There was a poll for every conflicts and participating members voted for their choices. A style guide was finalized in this process.

There was a dedicated session about Poontoon , Transvision and other tools that can help to localize. We got general guidelines from the senior contributors Mahay Alam Khan, Belayet Hossain , Biraj Karmakar etc.

We worked on building a Glossary of words, where we tried to put most frequently used and confusing words for localization together. We worked on nearly one thousand words.

We all shared our thoughts , problems , solutions of the problems and possibilities about localization. I felt great being there as a part of Mozilla localization community. My first Mozilla meetup was really a nice experience .