Community post from the Spanish Cloud Native Glossary team: Anyul Rivas, Rael Garcia Arnes, Nicolas Quiceno, Rodolfo Martínez, Victor Morales, Carol Valencia
The Cloud Native Glossary is a project led by the CNCF Business Value Subcommittee. Its goal is to explain cloud native concepts in clear and simple language without requiring any previous technical knowledge. We are in the process of translating the English version of the Glossary into as many languages as possible. This week we focus on Spanish and the team that localized the Glossary for Spanish speakers!
About the localized glossary
A Romance language, Spanish evolved from colloquially spoken Latin in Europe around the 5th century. Today, it is the official language of 20 countries and the world’s second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese. According to the latest report of the Cervantes Institute[1], Spanish is spoken by almost 493 million people. It is also the second most-spoken language in the United States and is expected to be the second-largest population of native speakers in 2060.
Despite its many speakers, Spanish does not feature prominently in science and technology. Scholar Enrique Alarcón[2] posits three causes for this: words exist but are unknown, confusion between similar but not identical concepts, and the lack of precision when using terminology.
That is a situation that we are trying to revert! Our team started with the localization of ten CNCF Glossary terms that went live at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2022. Since then, eight more terms have been merged, and another four are ready to be merged soon. And we are eager to do lots more! We are proud to contribute our little grain of sand to increase the technical documentation available in Spanish and to inspire others to collaborate on this noble cause.
[1] https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/anuario/anuario_21/informes_ic/p01.htm
[2]Alarcón, Enrique (2007). “El lexicón de la Real Academia de Ingeniería”. In Sequera, Reyes (ed.). Ciencia, tecnología y lengua española: la terminología científica en español (in Spanish). Madrid: Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología. pp. 11–15.
Why do you think localizing the Glossary in your language is important?
One of the Glossary’s goals is to define a common technical language to facilitate conversations about cloud native technologies. We believe that a standardized technical language is needed in any language spoken by engineers. Native Spanish speakers already have a somewhat standardized technical language and use daily. Creating a Glossary that summarizes all that made a lot of sense and is really helpful for anyone getting started or looking up terms.
Moreover, we firmly believe that knowledge should be accessible to any group or person without restrictions. Localizing these terms removes the language barrier, making this knowledge easily accessible to any Spanish speaker. Keep in mind that many concepts are novel and complex, e.g. canary deployment or shift left. It is a lot easier for anyone to understand these complex terms in their mother language.
We are excited to participate in such an influential project!
Meet the team
Anyul Rivas — originally from Venezuela, Anyul is based in Barcelona, where he works as a Principal Software Engineer at CloudBlue. There, he focuses on helping enterprises adopt cloud native solutions. In 2020, Anyul joined the Kubernetes project by contributing to the localization of the Spanish documentation and the Minikube dashboard UI.
Rael Garcia Arnes — A Site Reliability Engineer at Red Hat, Rael runs OpenShift at scale for SaaS services and develops operators for Kubernetes. He joined the Kubernetes project in 2018, where he kick-started the Spanish localization effort for the documentation in 2019. Very present in the Spanish cloud native community, Rael is the organizer of several public events, including Kubernetes Community Days Spain 2021.
Nicolas Quiceno — The co-founder at AstroKube, Nicolas has made it his mission to help organizations adopt cloud native technologies and build Kubernetes-based platforms. He is originally from Colombia, but currently lives in Madrid, where he enjoys building systems and tools with code.
Rodolfo Martínez — Rodolfo is a Software Engineer passionate about cloud native development. The co-founder of the Golang Guadalajara meetup and member of the Kubernetes release team, he is a true open source enthusiast. Aside from coding, Rodolfo really enjoys juggling and read about personal finances.
Victor Morales — A Senior Staff Software Engineer at Samsung, Victor has contributed to several open source projects, including OpenStack, OPNFV, ONAP. He actively participates in the CNF WG discussions to facilitate cloud native adoption in the telecommunications industry. Victor is passionate about exchanging ideas and learning from others, which is why he feels so at home in the open source community.
Carol Valencia — Carol is a Software Developer who loves to hone in on best practices for secure cloud native applications. An open source community enthusiast, Carol is the co-organizer of the local Docker and HashiCorp communities in Brazil and an active contributor to Aqua Security’s open source projects. In her spare time, Carol enjoys running and playing beach tennis.
Why did you decide to localize the glossary? Why is it important to you?
Our team was already contributing to several CNCF projects, including the Security White Paper and the Kubernetes project. The Spanish CNCF Glossary team members are part of the Kubernetes Documentation Special Interest Group, where we work on localizing the documentation, website, and tools like the Kubernetes Dashboard. While contributing to these projects, we realized that there is a common vocabulary related to the CNCF ecosystem. So we started working on an unofficial glossary to use as a reference for each document. A public and well-written glossary is key to providing a single source of truth for those concepts, ensuring a consistent Spanish localization, which is why we jumped on the opportunity to participate.
Working on Glossary localization is a great way to expand the community by breaking the language barriers and making the technology more approachable for technical and non-technical users.
How has the experience been?
Overall, the experience has been amazing! Collaborating with people from different countries that share the same language is insightful. A language is a living thing that behaves differently depending on where it is spoken — it’s fascinating!
That also brings some challenges. Deciding which word best captures the essence of what we are trying to define can be tricky. But through lots of deliberation, we’ve always reached a consensus about the best approach that satisfies the majority.
Our team is very inclusive and supportive; everyone is there to help new contributors get up to speed with this initiative. It is also a great way for contributors to gain technical knowledge and mentor others.
Any lessons learned you’d like to share with the community?
Helping with localization efforts is one of the easiest ways to participate in a CNCF project. It is also a great way to learn about non-written etiquette that apply to most other open source projects — it’s a great “gateway project!”
With Spanish spoken in many countries with distinct cultures, it can be difficult to establish a neutral term. But don’t worry! In this group, there is always someone willing to help. That’s the great thing about open source, there is always a community to help figure things out!
How and why should others contribute
Not sure how to start contributing or how the process works? Or do you feel you’re not knowledgeable enough to help? Don’t worry! Hop on our channel (#glossary-localization-spanish) and say “Hola” and/or join one of our weekly meetings. We’ll assist you in every step when you work on your first term. Start with something small and easy — even that is helpful to the project.
Why Join? You’ll learn about relatively new technical concepts and even new words in your own language. Meet people around the world, all while contributing to a project with a global reach. Join us and start today!
Anything else you’d like us to call out?
There are no limits — the Hispanic community needs you! Join us in November at KCD Spain 2022 to meet some of us and for great cloud native content en Español!