Since Hyperledger Fabric was first introduced in 2017, it has been embraced by the open source community, including both Fabric developers and Fabric contributors, from around the world. Today, Fabric networks are currently running in numerous countries. But 80% of the world’s population are non-English speakers. English-only Fabric documentation represents a barrier to adoption by the broader global community. What if the Fabric documentation was available in native languages to these non-English speakers? Blockchain networks could be deployed and shared more easily as the pool of Fabric users broadens to non-English speaking developers around the world.
Therefore, to spearhead further project adoption in the global community, Anthony O’Dowd launched an initiative in 2019 to begin translating the Fabric documentation into other languages to empower non-English speakers to use Fabric. It started with a small group of Chinese translators and spread to an academic institution in India where the Malayalam translation followed.
Anthony created a repeatable process to translate the documentation that allows translators from other languages to quickly on-board and get started. The process was published in the Fabric documentation Contributing Guide and includes resources and examples for how to start a new translation in GitHub as well as instructions for which topics to translate first and how to collaborate with other translators.
Today, Fabric is being translated today into six languages (Chinese, Japanese, Malayalam, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish), and we are excited to see what other languages people are interested in contributing to. See the existing translated content on the documentation home page, by clicking on the Introduction. Switch between languages by clicking on the version in the table of contents to view the other languages that are available and their translated content.
Translation of the Fabric documentation has benefited the broader community in many ways. Translators have acknowledged that the translation effort itself has been a great way to learn Fabric and,as they become familiar with the contributing process overall, provides the experience to not only contribute translations but also code or bug fixes. Translations now not only allowFabric developers to take advantage of the technology but also enable the general public to learn about the benefits of blockchain technology in their native language. When content is available in your native language, it encourages engagement, enables a stronger connection to the technology, and opens the door for even more companies to adopt Fabric technologies.
Get Involved with a New or Existing Translation Effort
But translation requires collaboration, so the Linux Foundation is launching the Fabric Documentation Translation Campaign to recruit and encourage new translators to join an existing effort or start a new language translation. To get involved with a translation, check out the available working groups or start your own. And you’re welcome to translate any of the material in the Hyperledger community that you would find useful to have in your own language.
Everyone has limited time, and the volume of content available for translation is large. However, the more people who step in to help just proof-read or contribute a small amount of translation, the greater the benefit for the entire community. Appreciation goes out to the following translators for their help in getting this community driven translation effort started: Satomi Tsujita, Yang Cheng, Junjie Zhou, Aneena Alexander, Renato Teixeira, Claudio Paz, and Oumar Fall. And we’d like to acknowledge other open source projects with active translation efforts such as Mozilla, Kubernetes, and Apache for a model of how to provide documentation in multiple languages. To get started visit www.hyperledger.org/translate or join a workgroup that has already started translations in your language. See International groups on the Wiki for a list of available groups or start your own.