Subject: Re: Swedish translation of Linux User Group HOWTO

From: Martin Karlsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 17:53:55 +0200

Rick Moen wrote:

Hi, Martin! Thank you for the note. I hope the English & American idioms
of my writing weren't too difficult to translate. (As you may be able
to guess from my surname, I'm Norwegian-American.[1] But my mother-in-law
is Swedish, so we're cousins after all.)

I didn't make that connection, but now that you mentioned it, it's
ofcourse obvious :) I think I managed to translate the idioms fairly
well. Some parts of the text were somewhat difficult to translate
without altering to much of the structure of the text. And as always
it's hard to translate technical stuff and make it sound good. I had
much assistance in an official sort of english-swedish technical
dictionary online though. But as an advance computer user I tend to use
english words and expressions when talking or writing about computers.
I acctually have trouble running software or operating systems in
swedish for example :) But as this is a more official text that's in
part directed towards new computer users, it was important to translate
even the technical english terms used in everyday swedish into swedish
equivalents.

If you think the information in your section would be of public
interest, I would be interested in adding an English-language version of
that to my existing text. After all, I already have sections for the
the legal and regulatory environments of USA, Canada, and Germany -- as
much as people have bothered to submit to me.

I will go through my changes more thoroughly below:

Starting with section 3.1 here

I added a direct link to swedish LUGs on linux.org (bold text), and
then I added a link to Svenska Linuxföreningen's (Swedish Linux
organisation)  try at coordinating the LUGs in Sweden, available under
lug.se (when writing this, se.linux.org seems to be down, so it doesn't
work right now). If you want to, you could add the second link (to
lug.se) in the english document.

In section
4.4 I added some links to swedish news sources to make the content
more swedish-oriented. You probably don't want to add that to the
english HOWTO. Later on in that section though (under Chris Browne's
comments on donations etc) I added some swedish projects related to
those already mentioned.

The swedish equivalent to EFF you might want to leave out, since that's
not in much interest to the english speaking part of the world. The
swedish/scandinavian Project Runeberg is of interest though. I mention
it in passing under Project Gutenberg. Their page (runeberg.org) is
partly in english, and although the books and texts in their catalog is
mainly non-english, it might have some value to atleast researchers and
the like.I think it's atleast worth mentioning in connection to Project
Gutenberg. There's also some norwegian litterature available! :)

I have then added two other swedish organisations that might be
interested in receiving money. I don't think they are of much
interested to non-swedes in this section though. They are Svenska
Linuxföreningen (se.linux.org) and Fritis (fritis.se). I'll get back to
the latter of those two below.

In section
5.2 you might consider adding se.linux.org as one of the LUGs
that's using internet in an effective way. I took the liberty to do so
:)

You mention in section 8.3 that you want people to contribute to your
HOWTO. I think that the project Fritis
mentioned above might be of interest to you. It's all in swedish and
for swedes, but even so it's an interesting project. The goal of the
project is, roughly translated from the homepage "to make free software
more obtainable to schools. We make educational material and other
things to help you get started." I haven't got much insight in the
project, so you might want to contact them directly to get a more
comprehensive comment on their work. You can mail them on
[email-masked]. One of the founders, Marcus Rejaas, is also the
president of Svenska Linuxföreningen I believe.

And last to section
7.1, about legal issues. In sweden you don't have to register your
organisation, but if you don't it's more of a club really. If you chose
to register, you do so with Skatteverket (swedish equivalent of IRS),
and you then have two options: to register as a non-profit organisation
(ideell förening in swedish) or to register as "economical association"
(ekonomisk förening). The latter is an organisation where the goal is
to benefit it's members economically, and as such I think it's unsuited
for LUGs. It is generally considered to be a corporate form rather than
organisational form. Examples of this kind of organisations are such
where the members themselves are companies, or bostadsrättföreningar
(building societies, co-operative tenant-owners). I have therefor not
mentioned this kind of organisation in the translation.

Non-profit organisations in Sweden doesn't have specific laws to
follow, rather other swedish laws are applied on them. They can hire
people and they can make profit. Generally they don't pay tax on their
profit (the profit stays in the organisation and unlike economical
associations the members of the organisation doesn't get the money in
their pockets).  To be able to make deals of different kind, you
register with Skatteverket to get an "organisation number". This makes
the organisation able to pay and get paid, otherwise you probably have
to arrange business etc through a member (i.e. not be a real
organisation, other tax-laws applies etc). By having registered with
Skatteverket and received "organisation number", you can apply for
contribution from the government. Generally speaking, I think it's
easier to have a non-profit organisation in Sweden than in the US,
because of the whole legal climate or system, so to speak.

That's pretty much what I know about non-profit organisations in Sweden
:) And ofcourse, this isn't to be taken as absolute truth, I could be
wrong. It's not to be considered complete legal council :) I probably
will extend this section in the swedish translation later on.

/Martin