It is a great day to live! I wanted to write a very special message here for this accomplishment, but I simply could not find proper words. So what I'm writing is straight and coming out of my mind right as we speak...
The new translation has been accepted!In the above screenshot you can see a part of its first page. The highlighted part says:
"
Romanian translation realized by Gazeta Bitcoin
Proof reading and adapted diagrams realized by NeuroticFish"
Feel free to check the entire document here:
https://bitcoin.org/files/bitcoin-paper/bitcoin_ro.pdf.
It's been a huge amount of work, which took months for making it flawless. But without NeuroticFish it could not be done. He helped me with reading, re-reading and re-re [...] -reading the document for so many times, spotting typos, various errors, bringing suggestions for a better formulation of the text... I remember that a very delicate part was to find a proper (
and also idiomatic, and I want to accentuate this -
idiomatic) way to say in Romanian the names of two problems mentioned by Satoshi:
The Gambler's Ruin Problem and The Binomial Random Walk. Many economic, statistics or mathematics problems which have a foreign name have also a translated name. But not all of them. And, anyway, even if they have a translated name in a specific language, there are high chances to not know the respective name unless you are experienced in the respective field. The names of these two problems... gave us problems, to say so
So we just thought and thought how they should be spelled in Romanian. I wanted so much to have just a perfect translation. NeuroticFish, on his side, he is a perfectionist as I also am. Sometimes, a perfectionist may be seen as pushy by others. Or as insisting too much. He knew that. But I also knew that, as I know how I am seen sometimes by others. He excused himself for insisting on some matters, but I told him: "
NeuroticFish, never worry about the way I see when you insist on some things! I want you to do it! And I thank you for acting on this manner, because only this way we can target perfection!". I needed such a person to collaborate with, as this work was about showing full respect and dedication for what Satoshi did... So, coming back to those two problems, I initially found a way to say their names in Romanian, then NeuroticFish came with another suggestion, then I came with another suggestion... Then we both started to search the Internet deeper and deeper for finding any possible clue if those problems had a Romanian name. Those two names - just this part, which seem so simple - took us a few days, if I remember well...
And that was just an example of how hard this work was. There are many English words or words used in cryptography or in Computer Science which do not have a Romanian counterpart. Some have, but sound not so natural. And yet, they are Romanian words. This part took also a great amount of time. Two such examples are "
nonce" (which does not exist in Romanian) and "
byte" (which exists in Romanian, in two variants - "
bait" and "
octet")...
I could give many other examples of this thorough and elaborate work, but this is not the main focus of this post. I just wanted to say a few examples of what I remember, things which seem so simple and yet they are very complicated.
Excepting his help on such kind of situations he also adapted all the diagrams in Romanian. Furthermore,
even the mathematics formulas used by Satoshi are also translated in Romanian, as they contain a few words in English.
In the end, this tremendous work was finished... But, somehow, the hardest part was just about to come: meaning to see the final outcome of the new proposed translation. To see if it will be accepted by bitcoin.org's maintainers. So we asked for help. For opinions from other experienced members. Some kind users gave very useful advice. I went even more far:
I asked theymos for guidance. And theymos was also kind and offered me precious guidelines for how to proceed. I take this occasion for thanking him personally for helping with sharing his great knowledge with me in the matter of performing a pull request. He warned me though that I should seek Romanians to confirm the quality of the new translation as otherwise Cøbra would not be able to accept the new proposed translation as he would not know anything about its quality, nor about its author and nor about NeuroticFish, which created the pull request.
As a consequence, when Cøbra
wrote on GitHub that
Thank you for this, unfortunately it's hard for us to review the quality of a translation, so it can sometimes happen that a bad translation of the whitepaper slips through.
As @Komodorpudel said, we will wait for a native Romanian speaker to confirm the quality of this particular translation, and then we will merge.
I already knew that this was supposed to happen.
The good part was that Cøbra and Komodorpudel had their eyes on the new proposed translation, which, for me, was another reason to fear about. Indeed, I also feared that the pull request will not be observed or maybe it will not get anybody's attention. I was happy to see I was wrong about that.
The hard part was to have indeed people to confirm the quality of the new translation and people who can confirm, at least, my general good intentions regarding Bitcoin, regarding Satoshi, regarding the Cypherpunks, regarding this forum or regarding the spread of Satoshi's word to people... This part was hard because Romanian board is mostly inactive, no matter how many efforts were done by me and a very few users which tried to keep it alive - NeuroticFish, 20kevin20 or IonCreanga. So I did not know if Cøbra's (normal) request can be accomplished.
But I kept my hope. In the end, this was all I could do. I simply hoped.
And, after a few days, the miracle happened! The new proposed translation was accepted! And this is unbelievable, as I still can't believe what I see with my own eyes. I started this journey on November 1st, 2020, when I created this topic, so 5 months and a half passed since then. I started this journey
blindly, as I knew it will be a huge work, if I want it to be flawless; I was aware of some of the risks that could jeopardize the final result -- meaning all the work could be in vain; and during this journey I found out about even more difficulties which could also lead to have a work in vain. So all I can say now is that for me everything seems like a miracle! And that I am so happy to see this positive outcome, as I am so happy I could do something very important in respect for Satoshi, for his work and also for bitcoiners!
But none of these could be realized without so many of you. Somehow -- like in another miracle -- so many worked as a team. And I want to thank you all.
I want to thank to those which in November 2020 encouraged me to create a new translation from scratch -
nullius was the first;
NeuroticFish was the second.
I want to thank to all users which offered valuable information about how to work with GitHub pull requests:
notblox1,
nullius,
bitmover,
NeuroticFish and
NotATether. And, of course, I also thank to
theymos which gave me precious details about all this process and about what to expect while doing it.
I want to thank to
NeuroticFish for being there with me in all this journey and for helping me so much. Without him none of these could be possible.
And I also thank to all of you which supported the new translation, which offered feedback about the quality of the new translation or which wrote positive feedback about me, about my good intentions, about my passion for Bitcoin and about my dedication when it is about working on a specific matter. Your inputs from GitHub and from this topic led to having this translation approved! So I want to thank to
IonCreanga,
20kevin20,
LoyceV,
1miau,
fillippone and
icopress. Again, without you, none of this could happen!
Last, but not least, I also want to thank to all other users which supported me in various ways, from sending encouraging PMs to offering me their ideas and congratulations for what I did. I will not mention all your names here, but you know which ones you are. And I thank you all. Your words helped me keep my hope alive and gave me even more determination for doing this!
Of course, I could not end this post without thanking as well to Cøbra and to Komodorpudel for accepting the new proposed translation. I know that my name meant nothing for you before as same happened with NeuroticFish's name. Maybe if you were active on this forum these names would tell you a few things but you are not active here so I understand perfectly how you felt when a total stranger came and said: "Hey, look! The actual translation of the white paper is very bad... You should change it with this new one!". Of course, these were not the exact words but this was the general idea.
I know you had to take
a leap of faith here and, in the end, you took it. The feedbacks from forum members with great reputation must have been
crucial for convincing you, but I am sure that, as you can not read the document, you felt you had to take a risk. And indeed it was a risk... But the result is now that a very good translation is present on bitcoin.org and this document is a way for respecting Satoshi. This document will help, maybe, hundreds or thousands of Romanian bitcoiners, curious to understand Bitcoin or to learn from this historical paper.
You took the right decision and I am happy about that and I thank you very much.
One small kind request though: on the website (
https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper) the Romanian translation still appears in the list with its previous author:
Please be so kind and change the author as well. Thank you in advance.
Thank you all, one more time. As you see, we worked as a team during all these months. Each had a special role in this project. And each had an important contribution for this final result.
Long live Bitcoin!
