FOSDEM 2026 - Automating translation of a bestseller to spark children's interest in coding
Talk by Nico Rikken and Matthias Kirschner The story “Ada & Zangemann – A Tale of Software, Skateboards and Raspberry Ice Cream” inspires the software freedom community because it covers more than the simple value of learning to program. It also covers the importance of control over technology and its impact on society. In this way the story is inspiring many kids, teens, parents and many others to learn programming and shape technology. I too was captivated by the story. Working on a Dutch translation sent me down the path of improving the automation to help others like me to translate the story and publish it in different formats. The free culture license of the book enables and compels the community to adapt it, and they have. The community keeps surprising us with new formats to convey the story. Since its release it has been translated into 30 languages, published as a book in 7 and as movie in 5. And it is available in a growing number of other formats: epub, online book, bilingual book and kamishibai. Translation and localization is the primary purpose of the automation. More interesting and ambition is to support the increasing number of formats: from printed book, to online book, voiceover text and subtitles. This wide variety of formats presents a unique challenge for which no ready-made solution exists. By leveraging open standards (XML, Docbook, ITS) and Free Software (Scribus, itstool, gettext, xsltproc, pandoc, Weblate) we created automation that enables translators to add new languages while also enabling new formats to be added. This includes a novel method for inserting text and images into Scribus. This multi-media setup can be used as inspiration for other free culture multi-media projects. In this presentation we will tell the story how the automation developed over time. We'll share the inspiring stories from the community that leveraged the automation and influenced its development. The technical challenge of the automation is fun, but the comm
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