Welcome to the Translation group - Introductions thread.

Hello all, its a pleasure to be here, my name is Novica, I come from Serbia.
Here to help with translation and learn somewhat about RoR apps, after heard about Loomio from my fb friend who living in NZ.

Hello!

My name is Ammar, and I come from Syria.

Currently, I am working on the role of internet tools in building and supporting local communities in Syria, and I am interested in the possibility of using Loomio to support local community governance and decision-making.

I have a background in computer science + Interaction and UX design, and I have participated in a small number of projects involving community building and collaborative design.. I will be glad if I could contribute to Loomio. Until I figure my way around, I can contribute to translating Loomio to Arabic.

Thank you for developing Loomio and for opening its source! I look forward to interacting with this promising project and the community around it :)

Hello everybody,
my name is Juan Alberto and I'm from the Canary Islands.
I'm also really interested in a software for taking decisions while no possibility of being together/at the same time considering it a need to invigorate the actions of work-groups.
I'm a Arts student in last course and work also (for free) with an association promoting coeducation between Senegal, Canary Islands and Haiti.

I have been working as German to Spanish and Spanish to German translator some years ago, and also helping in some software translation when i have had the time.

I understand also English, and French.

Congratulations for this great job, it's a pleasure to try to help with this.

@vietnamesel10n Hi!
I'd find it appropriate to create a subgroup for Vietnamese translations. We can discuss then what decisions are needed in this regard.

I have been a translator and now run a translation and writing business.
I like Loomio and would integrate such software into a larger project, which I will tell about those who are curious.
I have seen that the Romanian translation is bad and added some useful strings in Romanian.

@christianmairoll there's actually quite a bit missing, but I've been working on it for the past few days and expect to finish the main resource soon™! There's plenty more where that came from, though (;

Hi there,

I'm Christian, founder of Emsisoft, an Austrian antivirus company which is organized fully virtual with a team of 25 from all over the world. One of your developers didn't stop posting about Loomio on his Facebook page, so I had to have a closer look sooner or later. ;) I really like the idea and motivations behind all this, so I'd like to offer my support as well.

I have about 15 years of experience translating software and websites to German language. If there are any parts of Loomio missing in the translation, please let me know.

Continuing with reading the tech sheets next.. ;)

Hello, I'm Dutch but I translate to Esperanto now, it was on 26% when I hopped in, now it's getting really close to the half and I intent to finish it. I think Esperanto organisations (and freeform organisation) mostly has to work online because of the international distance, and then good consensus tools are essential. At the moment action and information tend to go haphazard when someone feels for it and has the strength to organize something, but I think some good ideas remain under the cover...

Thanks for the fantastic introduction @jellelangbroek (and all the other inspiring translators!) - you might want to check out this recent discussion about transitioning groups onto Loomio and breaking old habits.

Hi all,

Let me introduce myself. I work in social psychiatric healthcare for children. It's a great job where every day is new. This work is not my main focus in my spare time though.

I live in a former squatted hospital. We are a large group (+250 people) living under the roof of this hospital in Groningen, The Netherlands (http://www.orkz.net).
It doesn't have a squatted-status for 30 years now and we have 'official' houses (rooms) now.
I've lived here for 12 years and have contributed many hours to the computernetwork over these years (http://www.orxnet.org). We all agreed to contribute something to our community so we can keep rents low and do most of the things ourselves. It's expected of everyone living here, though we're not a commune or something like that.

I've always tried using technology to improve communication and this is a real challenge in this community. Communication works great with the old arrangements, but we have our occasional hiccups since we have meetings with a hundred people or more sometimes.

That's when I learned of Loomio! Loomio seemed like a great idea to let people do what they already did every day; posting on Facebook, but then with meaning and purpose ;)
I learned it's not easy to change the 'ways of community'. The past years I've setup many websites (intranets) and other (IT) services to try to make things easier for people here but these all failed largely as people don't take time to learn new things, especially when they don't see the direct purpose of it...

Due to this experience, I've chosen not to introduce Loomio here yet. At least not as a real-life tool we could use for decision-making. I started translating first. If we were going to use it here, it should at least be in Dutch. Then the press releases and video came so I wanted to wait for them to translate.
I hope I can use the material soon to introduce Loomio as a great way for INCLUSIVE decision making here. We might be with 250 people, but the lot of them don't know what's happening in their own building. We have to make a lot of big and small decisions every day (like are we going forward with this budget for next year? or what colors should the walls in the hallways be? etc)

I really believe in Loomio en I think it can involve more people in the decisions that affect them every day here.

I'd also love to hear experiences from people introducing Loomio to their community / workplace / etc. What worked, what not and so forth.

Thanks for the great work!

Hi everyone,
I'm a student currently in the second year of my master's degree in translation (for English and French). Having studied political science for my bachelor's and being an activist myself I'm pretty much naturally interested in ways and tools for making good, inclusive decisions. I think I've spent countless hours debating decision-making, consensus vs. majority and similar things with friends, fellow students and activists. Loomio seems to be a cool project and while I have no practical experience in localization yet, I'd like to try it out and work on the German translation (my first language).
The struggles I've been involved in were mostly about the environment, antiracism and unions. I love Linux and free software (writing these lines from my beautiful installation of elementary os) and have started learning some coding in Python and recently Java. The ultimate goal for the latter is to, one day, be able to make a contribution to OmegaT, my favorite tool for computer-assisted translation, which is (of course!) open source. (:
I'll be trying to sort out and finish the German translation of at least the main resource part in the next days.

Hi,

I'm Kate, Ukrainian IT-consultant, now living in Copenhagen, Denmark. I received a message from one of my New Zealand friends on Facebook, asking to paticipate in Loomio translation process.
Luckily, same time I started working with my own free social project for my lovely country, that is dedicated to develop IT instruments that will help to make Ukraine better. Everybody in my country now feels responsible for our own future. With my group of people we suffered from terrible process of decision-making in Skype and Facebook, and Loomio helped us a lot.

Despite my primary job is IT consulting and development, I like helping other people with my languages (both Ukrainian and Russian) - sure, for free. So if you are learning one of these languages and need help - contact me :)

Just finished Ukrainian translation, but will keep with Russian translation and corrections for Ukrainian.

Hello everyone,
I’m lancetw, master student lives in Taiwan, studying computer science and information management.

By the way, I'm also a full-stack web developer and interested in programming, GNU/Linux, Chinese language, translation and History of China.

Taiwan is on the road to democracy in a new stage.
Many young people in Taiwan realize they need a new platform to do more together.

Hi all,
I am Mako Chang. I come from Taiwan.
I just joined traditional Chinese translation team, but i have to say i am not familiar with Loomio. This is my first time to use the kind of online tool. We might make some mistake on some parts in translation, but we are trying to make it better.

Some of the team are people come from a group called g0v.tw and so do I. We are a group trying to make Taiwan better with our own skills. We are trying to patch what our government forgot. So that's why we are here.

Thanks for the supports all over the world.This is a Formosan Black Bear painting drew by Wallaby Lin. In Formosa, BEARS NEVER GIVE UP.

Hello friends!

I'm Elias Westerberg, an IT-consultant, 30 yo from Malmö, Sweden. I also have an Art Gallery and I'm involved in a political movement.

The seed to this movement started by two integral friends walking the streets of Malmö (a city here in the south of Sweden) discussing how society and politics ought to be… how could we have more ”good conversations”? The ideas matured into written form, momentum gained and more and more people got interested and now groups meet both here in the south and also in Stockholm to have ”cafés” to practice and to engage in topics that are current in the mainstream media and also on the horizon. Steps are taken to directly engage with parties, politicians and key questions on the agendas. This is not a political party, but can be seen as a movement and a possibility to transform the way politics and society is from today. In Denmark there is a new political party formed with a
declaration that is close to the manifest written and contact is made with them.

We are a team of 6 members/founders working with a project to create a forum+wiki hybrid for better conversations online (perspective taking, social deliberation skills etc.) to support the political movement mentioned above. It's called Initiativ Samutveckling btw, website in Swedish, use google translate :) http://samutveckling.se.

We have started the Swedish translation of Loomio and are looking into the possibilities of developing Loomio further, as a complement/alternative/co-development.

Hi Folks.
My name is Slava (full name is Viacheslav Medvediev). Software developer and civil activist from Odessa, Ukraine.
Born and grew up all 30 years there.

Interested in the subject of common decisions-making for a couple of years.
Have used Loomio after suggestion of my co-worker.
Almost immediately started translation to Ukrainian to introduce it to my friends who don't speak English.

Photo: me, my car. Odessa, Ukraine, this winter. The text on car body can be translated as "Is police ... with the nation?"

I'm Clíona Harrington from Cork in Ireland. I'm a fluent Irish speaker and Irish teacher. I'm also a music teacher. I'm very passionate about Irish being a living modern language and I'm constantly trying to promote it to young people here in Ireland.
I'm here to try and help with translations into Irish although I've been quiet enough so far due to being quite busy at work but I'm planning on being a bit more active in future.

Hello my name is Chris Taklis.

I live in a village in mt. of South Pelion in central Greece. I am farmer, but growing only ecological products. I don't speak very good english but my english have improved a lot after 2009 because i was volunteering in some environmental NGO here in Greece. After so many hours speaking english with different people from around the world my english improved a lot and have made some good friends, by knowing also different cultures.

Now i'm participating in Pirate Party of Hellas (www.pirata.gr) [not ppgr].

I learned about loomio when i was searching for an easy tool for pphellas, because in Greece the most people are digitally illiterate, and the most they are bored to learn something new.

I saw, learned, and played with Loomio and i like it most than ever. I think it's better than forums. ok, it still has some disadvantages but i hope in the future it won't have.

I like it and i help as i can. First of all translation to Greek, because the Greeks they don't know all english.
Also i publish it in social media a lot, i requested some features that it will make it more great than it is, i speak to friends and groups that i participate to come and work in loomio, and finally i try and publish the crowdfunding campaign.

That's are very few things for me!

Hi there,

First off, many thanks for the existence of Loomio.

My name is Antonio Renato. Born (1974) and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; after live in NYC for couple years (1995-96) got some English skills.

After a life time 'only' as an hacktivist participated in the Occupy Movement (OcupaRio) back in 2011 and currently collaborating in some Assemblies happening in my city due to the protests that are happening. You guys probably have an idea how difficult it is to deliberate reaching consensus in a Square’s General Assembly where presents some issues like: most people of the city don’t participate; the best orators with rhetoric (including many infiltrators from anachronistic political parties) and with too many friends (unbalancing) usually hijacks the Popular Assemblies; shy people don’t speak (even though many times having a lot to contribute); and so on. Many of those problems were the biggest problems in OcupaRio and the occupation of Rio's City Hall (even people being so close together for several months) and are still to be overcome in many popular assemblies trying to be horizontal and consensual.

So, as always looking forward for ways to contemplate all kinds of people in a Direct Democracy, my excitement is high with Loomio. It is (and hopefully will be even more) a great and essential tool for many types of Government 2.0

For Portuguese and English speakers (Spanish only the first book), two of my books are available in my website (PDF is for free, of course) arenato.com and are published in Portuguese by a publishing house and (badly translated) self-published in English in Amazon. Anyway, avoid to buy hard copies, please (print or copy). Both English and Spanish versions may be under revision only after the third book be written. The series is called Democratization and titled: From Republic to Democracy, with the subtitles: 1. A Conceptual Essay for Direct Democracy; 2. Applied Economics for Direct Democracy; and Defense Systems in a Direct Democracy (in process).

By the way, greetings to the people around that belongs to the Brazilian Pirate Party which is the best party in my country, although its still a political party (nothing against political parties, my struggle is against the current so-called representative system, then all for Direct Democracy with as many parties as needed). Anywayz, if any of you want to personally contact me: info@arenato.com

For a welcome mat section this message is getting too long. Then my:

Warmest regards to all

Hello all, my name is Mix. I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I work as a developer on Loomio but am also the contact for people interested in translating Loomio. I'm helping with translation because I want to be able to offer what we're building to as many communities as possible, and language should not be a barrier.

the photo is me standing in the area I grew up (Hawkes Bay). In maori I would call it my tūrangawaewae, the 'place where I stand', my foundation.