New Website Plan and Discussion

The new PanAfrican Localisation Network project succeeds the PAL project in early 2008 and will run for 3 years. It will use the same webspace, though at least temporarily making use of one of the alternate URLs, http://www.PanAfriL10n.net/ . The new project site will incorporate information already on the current one plus a lot more. Please help with your ideas below.

1. Requirements

• Multilingual
  • how many languages?
    • I'd suggest two categories of languages - "working" and "localisation" - with English and French as the first two for working languages; some parts of the site or basic info can be put in the localisation languages (and if anyone is ambitious, as much more as they can do) - Don
  • which languages?
    • English and French as the first two "working languages"; all languages specifically listed as localization targets as "localisation languages" -Don
  • all are LTR languages?
    • Should try to have something in Arabic of course, which would be the main RTL/bidirectional language; some locales for some languages could include Ajami or N'Ko transcriptions, so maybe something in those could have some presence on the site too -Don
  • Should support fallback for incomplete translations
• Project news, events, forums, agenda, reports, recordings, photos, notes
• Space for the different Subprojects to include reports, documents, ..etc.
• Feeds from other interesting sites
• Access levels? How many different roles and what will be their access permissions?
  • Beware of over-restricting; permit comments by anyone with kaptcha if necessary; use log-ins for project members to access specific areas -Don
• Cross links with & continued development of info on the existing site.

2. Potential Project Names

In addition to the formal project name, a shorter name is being sought. As an example, the "Réseau Mondial pour la Diversité Linguistique / World Network for Linguistic Diversity" chose the name "Maaya" (from the Manding language) as its short name. Please feel free to post here any names you think will be suitable for this project.

• Koya Gana (submitted by Karim Mardini)
  • This is an attempt to say "red earth talks" in Hausa (I think). I don't know the language so the conjugation might be wrong. I think it flows nicely and has a catchy sound. Comments from Tunde and any Hausa speakers are welcome :). I also believe having the name restricted to two syllables as opposed to four would be better and easier to remember.