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To: Markus Mottl <mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at>
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr (OCAML)
Subject: Re: translation of book (fwd)
References: <200005022222.AAA26296@miss.wu-wien.ac.at>
From: John Prevost <prevost@maya.com>
Date: 04 May 2000 13:57:12 -0400
In-Reply-To: Markus Mottl's message of "Wed, 3 May 2000 00:22:19 +0200 (MET DST)"
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>>>>> "mm" == Markus Mottl <mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> writes:

    mm> Hello, Bad news: I have just received an answer from O'Reilly
    mm> concerning future translations of the French
    mm> OCaml-book. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any
    mm> intentions to do so... (see below). Maybe people want to "push
    mm> it" a bit at the French branch (address also below)? ;-)

    mm> If nobody asks, nothing will move...

I've just sent mail asking "when will an English edition of ... be
available?" with a short explanation about why I think it would be
worthwhile to translate it.

I wonder what would happen if a group of people offered to act as
translators/polishers.  I've noticed that automatic tools like
Babelfish tend to do a much better job on technical writing than, say,
poetry, and would be willing to spend the time it would take to refine
at least a chapter or two of such a work.


Speaking of babelfish, I just took a look at the book's web page
through it and was very pleased by the following expression:

"Diffused freely by its creators of the INRIA ..."

I don't know whether this is just a babelfish artifact, or a straight
translation of the French, but "diffusion" rather than "distribution"
of open-source seems like a pleasant metaphor to me.

John.