Ed Brill

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1. 1  Emilio Penedo  | 11/29/2007 8:58:30 AM

   Ed,why Spanish is not one of the "base" languages ?.

   Spanish is the 3rd most widely used language in the internet.

   { Link }

   Spanish is the 2nd or 3rd most widely spoken language

   { Link }

   Domino Administrator has not been available in Spanish since version 6.

   SMB market in the Americas is not bilingual (only 4 countries in the continental Americas are not Spanish spoken) so who do you think the customers will select?:

   The guy who offers an English interfase to manage his Lotus environment (that's me), or Microsoft who offers an all Spanish interfase ? The market is about perceptions .....

1. 2  Luis Guirigay http://lguiriga.blogspot.com | 11/29/2007 9:39:45 AM

   I have to say Emilio is right.

   Most of my former customer in South America were not pleased with the Admin client just in english in earlier releases. Most of the countries in Central and South America (and Mexico) don't need English at all, so, even big companies don't have english-speaking employees. Some IT people may know english because they need to study for different products.

   If this new feature has to be deployed manually, a lot customer won't be happy.

1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/29/2007 10:25:21 AM

   @1/2 - Good point -- I happen to be with the VP of Notes/Domino products today, and he and I are looking into some background on the specific language choices.

1. 4  Irv Schor  | 11/29/2007 3:04:16 PM

   I've got about 30 users of the Italian 7.0.1 client. Luckily, our upgrade to 8 on the client side isn't coming any time soon. I do hope this is resolved/expedited, however.

1. 5  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 11/29/2007 7:12:14 PM

   I can understand it, but as pointd out I do not think this will sit very well with some clients.

   2 things are of interest in this technote:

   1) This will work on NOMAD, which is very cool and useful because

   2) From the Note: "Domino Administrator language versions are available for French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese only.

   If you want to install MUI Pack for the rest of the langua ges for All Clients Notes, please do not select the Administrator Client initially when first installing Notes.

   If Administrator is installed on your computer, only the supported languages are installable with MUI Pack. If you select the rest of the languages in this dialog you will not be able to proceed with the installation and be required to either unselect the languages not available for the Administrator client or not install the Administrator client to keep the desired language settings."

   SO if I understand this, my friends in Israel for instance can not run an administrator client on a pc which is using a Hebrew MUI for their daily client?

   That is working as designed?

1. 6  John Turnbow http://www.navasota-unified.com | 11/30/2007 8:01:34 AM

   Emilio is right... Here is a list...

   Andorra

   Argentina

   Belize Bolivia - Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Bolivia

   Chile

   Colombia

   Costa Rica

   Dominican Republic

   Ecuador

   Equatorial Guinea

   El Salvador

   Guatemala

   Haiti

   Honduras

   Mexico

   Nicaragua

   Panama

   Paraguay

   Peru

   Puerto Rico

   Spain

   United States - :-)- Just look at Florida, Texas, California, Arizona...

   Uruguay

   Venezuela

   Venezuela

1. 7  Emilio Penedo  | 11/30/2007 9:13:04 AM

   Actually Spanish is:

   One of the six official languages spoken in the UN

   One of the three languages spoken within NAFTA

   It is spoken in (from North to South):

   Mexico (offical name United Mexican Sates - Estados Unidos Mexicanos), Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay. In the Caribean Spanish is spoken in Republica Dominicana, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Abroad is spoken in Spain, and its 2nd language in Morroco, Angola and the Philipinnes.

   To really know Spanish influence throughout the world we need to check a XVI-XVIII worldwide map.

1. 8  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/30/2007 9:22:41 AM

   I understand the point and impact of the Spanish language in the global market.

1. 9  Karl-Henry Martinsson  | 11/30/2007 10:09:06 AM

   @2 - I agree that the client need to be in Spanish. But the defacto "official" language of Internet is English. Any administrator in Latin America should understand English.

   Not only to work the admin client, but also to be able to respond to abuse complaints (a.k.a. LARTs), which generally are sent in English.

   However, I know that this is not the case, though.

   Some Spanish speaking countries (together with China, Taiwan, Korea, France and other countries where the English language skills are not as high as say in the Scandinavian/North European countries) are well known in the anti-spam community for not taking actions against spammers/zombied computers in their network.

   The most common excuse is "the language barrier". That excuse means that the admin does not understand english well enough to take action against spammers (or they don't see the problem with spam).

   This excuse is usually followed by what I call the "n00b excuse", i.e. they said "we are new to Internet and don't understand best practices/netiquette..."

   ("Sorry, officer, I am new to driving, I did not know the big numbers on the side of the road were speed limits, and the red light means stop... Can I go now?")

   That is why Brazil (in particular), as well as some other countries in Latin America is blacklisted by many mail admins in Europe and North America. { Link }

1. 10  Karl-Henry Martinsson  | 11/30/2007 10:15:29 AM

   @1 - Your first link does not show that "Spanish is the third most used language on the Internet". It show that native Spanish speakers are the third biggest group of users on the Internet. They may be using English when communicating/creating web pages.

1. 11  Karl-Henry Martinsson  | 11/30/2007 10:21:56 AM

   (Followup to myself in @9):

   I know that Brazil is not Spanish speaking, but Portuguese. However, Argentina has a reputation almost as bad as Brazil when it comes to supporting spam. I know many who simply block 207/8 in their firewall...

1. 12  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 11/30/2007 10:31:11 AM

   @8 - Then step to it and get it addressed, tout de suite! ;-) Oh... you mean you don't personally make all the development and deployment decisions about Notes and Domino?

   Kidding aside, I would think the language selection was based on current customer distribution. It would make a LOT of sense to me to go after emerging markets by making them easier to deploy to. Mexico City is the largest metropolitan area in the world. [Outside of Tokyo, which has apparently annexed half the island.] Even more interesting is that three of the top 10 largest cities are in India. The use of English by India's Parliament works in IBM's favor in this case since India has 22 official languages. :-)

1. 13  Emilio Penedo  | 11/30/2007 11:10:01 AM

   So for any upgrade in none "base" language countries, customers will need to deploy first English version and then deploy the "Language Pack" ? Any study out there showing how it gonna impact the TCO ?

   How about customers using Tivoli Provisioning (previously known as TCM )... Will they need to send two upgrades policies ?

1. 14  Salvador Gallardo  | 11/30/2007 12:26:53 PM

   Ed, another issue with the lack of spanish pre-packaged notes client, is when you want to deploy the new releases of the notes client, we are facing some issues with two deployments (one customer has 50,000 notes seats and another 14,000 notes seats, all in spanish) we have to send two packages, the ONL1 client, then the mulitlingual package, this will generate more network traffic

   At this momemnt we are unpacking the MUI and delete al the CABS that are not Spanish, but we have to do another job, modify the installer to make it transparent to the user.

   As Emilio and Luis said, not every customer is happy with this 2 "step installation", and this is another chance to MSFT to attack us talking about how easy is to deploy outlook in Spanish with a single package

   I Don´t know if this decision has something to deal with technical issues, but if this is the last word of IBM about how we are going to deploy the spanish notes client maybe a good choice is to creat a process that links the two installation process (the ONL1 and the MUI packages) in order to create the perception of a single installation process.

   And what is going to happen with the next releases of the notes client, we hve to deploy again the ONL1 client and then the MUI again, just like the Language Pack at the Domino server?

   I don´t know if this could help us to change the decision of having two package, I believe that the people from Brazil has the same perception.

1. 15  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 11/30/2007 12:47:49 PM

   @9 many Chinese would argue the language of the internet is not English or will not be soon.

   { Link }

   And having worked on Notes networks in South America(and using Spanish clients and server installs) and across Europe and the Middle East I find your post rather offensive on behalf of all the people I worked with which do not speak and/or read English well, if at all, and could benefit from native client menus.

1. 16  Karl-Henry Martinsson  | 11/30/2007 1:10:52 PM

   @15: I said that the Notes client should be in Spanish, for the end users. But Emilio, in the first post, pointed out that the Admin client has not been in Spanish since version 6. I then made the argument that any administrator of any system that connect to the Internet must know English. That is the language abuse complaints are written in, security alerts written in, and technical information written in. An administrator that does not have a good knowledge of English (good enough to be able to use an English Admin client), is a danger to the company, since he/she will not be able to:

   1) react to complaints about botted/zombied computers and spam/back scatter

   2) read security warnings/bulletins

   3) setup firewalls, routers, server and other systems in a secure way as described in the documentation

   This is exactly why certain countries are widely blocklisted. If you block all connections from Brazil, China and Korea, your spam will drop to a trickle. The spammers use the fact that systems in those countries often are setup in an insecure way, and that the ISPs (due to the language barrier) don't act on complaints...

   I am not trying to offend anyone, I am just stating the facts...

1. 17  Lucia  | 11/30/2007 1:29:56 PM

   @9 Not agree...

   Please note that on Government, Administration, and PUBLIC organism, not having an SPANISH INTERFACE is a BIG PROBLEM; even since the administrative point of view.

1. 18  Luis Guirigay http://lguiriga.blogspot.com | 12/1/2007 9:00:01 AM

   I wrote a post in my blog about this situation

   { Link }

   @9.....17

   If an IT person gives such answer like "I didn't understand the manual, so I can't fix it" you are probably talking to one of the worst IT support team. I was part of the South American market for almost 10 years and never got that answer. If you still have those issues, send them a Google Translator link.

   A guy who doesn't speak a particular language and needs to study/read a book written in that language will have to make an additional effort in order to learn. If the Software developers can make things easier for those guys, go and do it.

   About the security concern, many of Latam countries may don't have the same budget other companies have. But I am 100% sure that any big company will invest in fixing any security issue. I can also imagine that part of this spam issue is due to legal stuff, I don't know if Brazil, for example, can take legal actions against spammer.

1. 19  Thomas Adrian http://www.notessidan.se | 12/4/2007 4:01:29 AM

   What is the name of the file to download on passport advantage for Swedish ?