Whonix is a wonderful project that provides people with security and anonymity. I believe that it can be a really useful tool for people in China to take back their Internet freedom without putting their lifes at great risk.
So, recently, I posted a guide on my blog to introduce Whonix in Chinese, which is helpful for those who find reading english difficult. I know it is much better to translate whonix wiki rather than write some guide myself but according to the advice given by @Ego on this post(Two questions about translating Whonix Wiki - #2 by Ego), I decided to wait few weeks to see a easier-to-translate whonix wiki coming.
A great news is that there’re many Chinese people who really love Whonix and are willing to help to translate Whonix wiki, too. We’ve set up a translation group together and you can find the group members here: 二翔子的博客: 翻译组成员邮箱列表.
By the way, I’m not sure if it is ok to use a chinese headline in the forum, but I consider it necessary since it helps someone who can only read chinese and occasionally visit the Whonix forum find some useful chinese recourse about Whonix quickly.
I am glad you like Whonix and appreciate your efforts! A Chinese language snippet in the title is okay.
According to wiki translations, I personally cannot work on this. It’s up to @Ego to see if/how we can proceed. I guess Ego will reply to this thread in near future.
Overall, whatever works best for your community. I am afraid non-English language support is not better than it is, but as I understand, everyone including you already know we are struggling with our overall mission (low funding, low man power, etc.)
If we fail to well integrate non-English languages at whonix.org, then likely other community pages will pop up. That is natural and fine.
If it seems helpful to you, and if you’re willing to moderate it (on topic Whonix, no spam, no violation of laws, what not), also a Chinese sub forum could be created. If that even works. (With Arabic right to left not so great.)
First of all, let me just thank you again for (still) being willing to support Whonix by translating.
Now, sadly what I’ve written in that thread still applies as much as it did back then. Translating MediaWiki is a tedious task at best, which is why I’m still working on getting an alternative going. Sadly, my initial prediction of “a few weeks” was a little to optimistic.
However, you seem to have been in the “translator class” ever since october 2015, when you first asked whether you could contribute by translating. Like mentioned in that initial thread, everything should be translatable for you as far as I’m concerned.
So, if you would like to translate a page or two, you are welcome to do this and shouldn’t face any issues with it, as far as I can tell.
Furthermore, while a lot may be “lost in translation”, as far as I can tell, your current guide seems to be very thorough and well crafted already. However, I’m not sure whether the manual configuration of network settings and torrc is really a necessity. As far as I can decipher, this is done to circumvent censorship measures. Is that the case?
[quote=“Patrick, post:2, topic:2579”]
According to wiki translations, I personally cannot work on this. It’s up to @Ego to see if/how we can proceed.[/quote]
I understand there’re so many important task need you to finish:)
Yes, Ego always replies very quickly:)
Seriously, the fact that Whonix community keeps on creating wonderful productions for the world under low funding and low man power is really respected.
While there’s a long way for translation to go, is it possible/necessary to do some easier job about localization first to make it more user friendly first? For example, to include some chinese fronts(actually the chinese characters shown in whonix is not good enough currently) or pinyin input-method in whonix?(I know this idea is a little bit ‘selfish’ since not every whonix user need it while they have to take the disadvantage of bigger whonix size and the risk of additional software. )
I understand it will be a huge mission so just take your time:)
I’ll do some translation based on MediaWiki first before your work finished:)
Thank you for your concern, in my guide, the only thing in Whonix I (have to) touch is adding a line to torrc, like: HTTPSPROXY: X.X.X.X: X.X;
And I understand one should know what he/she’s doing before deciding to configure the network settings in Whonix:)
And the reason why I have to do this is to circumvent the censorship.
While you are not obligated to answer each and everyone in any way, please do read each and every post. If something is outside the topic of Whonix user support, please explain the user, close and delete the topic. It unfortunately must not become an any-topic free speech platform. Please notify us when you no longer wish to keep this task.
The Chinese fonts and input method should be added in the default Whonix distribution, so the non-Chinese and Chinese users can share the same software fingerprint. It will be good for anonymity.
There is a question. Is Whonix website ready for DDoS attacks?
China goverment will attack the anti-censorship website, if the website having a great influence in China.
Maybe this will happen in the future.
It’s great.
Unfortunately there are so many Chinese input methods. Which one should be included is difficult decision. We need more Chinese users expressing their opinion. just wait some time…
According to my observation, DDoS attacks are usually performed when it is a hard choice for CCP to simply block some websites.
By saying “a hard choice for CCP”, I mean, in CCP’s point of view, there’re more disadvantages than advantages to block the site . For example, one of the reasons why CCP attacked Github (twice) instead of simply blocking it is that they believed censoring Github would encourage more programmer to circumvent censorship while it was a good idea to perform DDos attacks to force Github do “self-censorship”.
However, sometimes, CCP did perform DDoS attacks on the websites which had already been censored to express their anger. For example, CCP attacked GreatFire, an organization focusing on observing and circumventing China’s Internet censorship.
For me, I really hope Whonix website is able to deal with DDoS attacks. And there’s no doubt that once Whonix were under DDoS attacks, refusing to do “self-censorship” would make the Whonix project earn more respect from people who believe in Internet freedom.
