Project Details & Presentation
In this presentation, I aim for 6 main things:

1. To be as clear as possible to ease the work of the moderator.
2. To provide the proper information about the current project.
3. To propose the logs of my personal work and interactions with this project.
4. To educate the readers about @utopian-io and the open-source culture.
5. To show a model of transparency and accountability toward our community.
6. To reach a bigger/larger audience of devoted Netizens.

Project Dissection:

PrestaShop is what we call in the world of the open-source development, a freemium solution. A gamer myself, I believe that most gamers out there know very well the meaning of freemium games/software. ⁽¹⁾ But this is not the case here, because we are dealing with something totally different. I personally did not know that we can pair the concept of a freemium solution/product, with an open source e-commerce.

First, to make things clear, let’s start first with the official definition of this platform directly from the company itself, and the information is as the following:⁽²⁾ “PrestaShop is an efficient and innovative e-commerce solution with all the features you need to create an online store and grow your business.” And according to the website, this platform aims for one important thing which is “Our mission is to develop world-class eCommerce software through open source innovation. Together with our community, we provide software that enables everyone to have a successful eCommerce business”. ⁽³⁾

^{Image by V.F - The website offers a very responsive demo version for anyone who wants to play with.}

And this is exactly where things get interesting, PrestaShop does not have something really revolutionary compared to the other FOSS that I worked on. But by digging deeper, I discovered that this project has something that not all the projects I've worked on have. A big and dedicated, diversified and loyal community. The project on Crowdin has over 190k words; but still, people are competing me in finishing the translation of my own language, which I personally find very great and very encouraging. Projects are always easier to tackle when there is a huge community around it. I am pretty sure that at the time of writing these words, strings are being pushed for my language. The sense of collectivism is really strong around this project, and I really wish all projects hade the same dedication from the PO.

With approximatively 200-250k shops around the world, and used in more than 163 countries, with more than 60 languages available. ⁽⁴⁾ This platform is really a big player in the field of the eCommerce industry.

PrestaShop has also more than 300 built-in features for managing the product lists, payments, shipping, manufacturers and suppliers. In addition to this, it uses a web template system that allows users to customize their stores and add new features by adding the add-ons. ⁽⁵⁾

^Credits

One other interesting thing I stated above is that the platform proposes and I quote “A Powerful Freemium Open Source Solution with International Reach”. The company is really trying all the possible capabilities and services to enhance the experience of the users/customers, and at the same time, the profitability of the stores. To find our way in this maze, I will directly quote the point of view that the company stated about this model:⁽⁶⁾

"With its completely free solution that is available for download, PrestaShop offers endless opportunities to help merchants succeed! The company has teamed up with more than 80 industry-leading partners, such as PayPal and OVH, and offers 3,500 modules for payments, logistics, sales promotions, and more, all aimed at improving a store's features."

The Why:

The question of why will always be a question of the omnipotent nature of the virtue, genuineness, conviction, ethics and value. Thus, I will allow myself to share the same convictions I hold most dear. Fare from the scourge, of the oblivion world!

^{The question of why I’m doing this project is quite hard to answer for many reasons when @utopian-io launched a call for all the moderators to write a contribution to speak about their thoughts in relation with @utopian-io and the open-source community/culture. I started to write an article for my community, and one of the few questions that I tried to answer this question “How can we; as humans, conceive doing something just for the greater good?”. A hard question to answer.}

^{Is doing something for free a key factor in defining a true dedication for a community or an idea? or it is more like a question of values and the amount of intellect and time invested to do good? I can argue that the architecture of the world of today can lead us to see idealism as some kind of illusion, a country for the weakest, for people who can’t face reality; yet, I have always wondered why it was so difficult to exercise and apply an idealistic model of working, it must be us! which lead me to my next point.}

^{In my time working as a language manager, I came to a few conclusions that I already pointed out in my article. One of those conclusions is that the open-source culture is not really for everyone. Thanks to the few events that happened lately, we had an idea and a distilled conclusion at the same time. The neural system of @utopian-io is highly dependent on the incentives. A huge drawback in my opinion, especially when incentives are seen as granted. Our utopian community is basically the ideal case model to study the human nature and Behaviors. There is a clear clash between the idealistic idea that @utopian-io is trying to work with, and the realism of the human emotions; which lead us to see this situation as two parallel and infinite dogmas.}

^{Theoretically, I am quite sure that any initiative based in an open-source environment, will always have the same issues that we are having here in @utopian-io, the clash of dogmas will always be there because incentives/monetary resources are like the raw materials in these cases. I did bring @utopian-io in the presentation of this project because, in some ways, we share the same fate and destiny, we are working for the same goals; and for sure, we are paying the same price for daring to empower a semi-idealistic idea.}

^{Well, why I’m here? I’m playing the role of the dragon's teeth (Drachenzähne) against those waves of realism! … This is just a granular contribution compared to the whole matrix of the open-source world.}

Proof of Work

It will surprise anyone or lie if I say that working on this project was comfortable, trouble-free, and very smooth. To start with, this project has exactly 199068 words (Duplicates: 133 015 words), which is a massive number. In the Arabic translation, the percentage right now is at 89% and in a constant evolution, the Arabic community is quite active on this project, same thing with other communities. This gives us a clear idea about the importance of this project.
Tackling this project at the near completion gave me for sure a huge advantage, I did on many occasions use the Translation memory available, because the accuracy of the string presented was near perfection. Although I made a lot of semantic and punctuation correction and adjustments, the work at the end, I must say, was very less tedious and boring.

Unlike previous projects, and after over 130k already translated, I did not feel that I need bring something new, or to exert my meticulous sematic perception, or even to compel any other translator/proofreader to accept my views. Rather that, I opted for an approach that will allow me to adapt and to do my best to present a translation that will suit the already established style of writing.

Proof of Brain

In this section, you can see some kind of logs I used to print each time more information was needed to understand the functionality of some concepts/terms/words. This will also allow the reviewer and readers to clearly understand the nature of some choices that I made in some strings, and hopefully, to encourage any discussion about the betterment of the translation if needed.

On top of this, I’m sure that everyone can benefit from some information printed here. I actually did learn many things, and I hope the people who are going to read this contribution will feel the same as I did … smarter!

The information that I printed here must serve only as a guide to follow up my translation issues logs. If you want more information about these logs, I suggest you check the links at end of this contribution.

[Situational]

The first issue is well-known by the “RTL” translators. The problems arise mainly in the strings that contain, codes and variables. After the translation, keeping the variables in the right place is quite hard sometimes, or nearly impossible in few strings. This is why it is always a good practice to contact the project owner/manager first before doing anything with those strings. Nonetheless, I did push strings with inversed variables, and I based my decision on the chooses made by the managers on approving Arabic strings with the same issue. But just to be sure, I left a message to Louise Bonnard about this issue just to clear things up.

I also tried to be as neutral as possible with regard to the gender specification. Although in most previous strings pushed by previous translators have some incoherencies about this issue. The same thing can be said about the strings that were approved by the managers, or proofreaders. Thus, I am just trying to be neutral when I can, and push the gender if necessary. Usually, when many people work on one same project without a clear framework, things get too complicated, and very hard to manage; this is why I think it is a good practice be to present a versatile approach to the translation.

This issue is quite funny, I found in a string I wanted to translate, a suggestion market as a perfect match, but while reading it, I could not stop myself thinking about the word (الأباتشي) presented as a translation for the Apache (a free and open-source cross-platform web server). ⁶ If a person was out of this field of working, he will for sure find this very weird, the reasoning behind this is the fact that, this word is heavily anchored on the minds of the Arabic community, because of the many warfare related events. Yet, from a semantic point of view, the translation is quite justified, even though I would have chosen (الأباتش) instead of (الأباتشي). To conclude, I decided to go with “Apache”; meaning, no phonetic translation for brand names.

Trivia

• I would like to thank HF20 for giving me the boredom necessary that helped me to perfect the presentation and contribution.
• I did design the separators and the thumbnail image. The logo in the thumbnail image is from the official website of the project. The quotation marks used are from Freepik.
• I had to suddenly change the project for the simple reason that the project owner/managers are quite inactive in regard to accepting new translators/proofreaders. But, I will for sure go back to work on the previous projects when the situational requirements are met, and by the same occasion, to mitigate any personal preferences.

References^{(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium
(2) https://www.prestashop.com/en
(3) https://www.prestashop.com/en/about-us
(4) press-releases/2014/10/01/internationalization-and-open-source-drive-growth-for-prestashop
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PrestaShop#cite_note-1
(6) https://danlargo.com/2012/03/29/the-freemium-business-model/
(7) https://crowdin.com/profile/LouiseBonnard
(8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server
(9) https://crowdin.com/translate/prestashop-official/32685/en-ar#5677686}

^{[F.W.count: Final Word Count] | [T.W.count: Total Word Count]}

W.C	Untranslatables	F.W.C	T.W.C	P.%	C.T	Cont.Num
~1122	~100	~1022	4485	90	9-20/9-30	2

^{Utopian witness | DaVinci witness
Join the Arab Steem community.
By Victor Frankenstein
For science, and what lies beyond it.}