We at Quartile are an open-source-oriented Odoo partner, and we have long been active in the work of localising Odoo, the open source ERP, into Japanese — but that work has tended to take up our time, and we had not got far with the other kind of localisation, such as support for Japanese business practice.
The Japanese localisation of Odoo V11 is still not finished, but it is in reasonable shape across the scope our customers have deployed, so we have recently shifted the focus of our community activity to building localisation features for Japan (we are still supporting the translation work too). So here is where that activity stands and how we are thinking about it.
We have created a repository for Japanese localisation
It is activity under the OCA
There is nothing better than having the providers who deliver Odoo services to users in Japan, and the users themselves, build and maintain the Japanese localisation features together. If everyone who needs a feature develops it separately, an enormous amount of effort is wasted, and that waste ends up passed on to users as cost.
So the first thing we did, last month, was to prepare a box — a GitHub repository — for gathering that activity in one place. We think Odoo community activity should be gathered under the OCA as far as possible, so this repository too is of course created under the OCA.
Japanese Localization for Odoo: https://github.com/OCA/l10n-japan/tree/12.0
How is it run?
Still trial and error
For now the members here who raised the idea — Tim and me — are the maintainers. Repositories under OCA management generally apply strict policies on code review and testing to keep quality up, but the operating policy is basically left to the maintainers, so we expect to settle ours by trial and error from here. At the moment we run OCA's standard coding-style checks, but we have set no explicit rules on unit tests or review.
There is also the language question. Everyone taking part at the moment is comfortable communicating in English, and English is what we have used so far, but for a repository whose subject is localisation, making it English-only would dampen people's willingness to join, and that would not be a good thing. Thinking about working with players who do not read Japanese, we think the reasonable line is English as the rule with comments in Japanese also welcome. For reference: https://www.facebook.com/groups/openerpjapan/permalink/1842841109101992/
For the time being we are building features for the latest stable version (V11), but our activity starts from what our customers need, so building a feature for V10 is possible too.
What features are there?
We are building what you cannot do without when using Odoo in Japan
Where do you feel something is missing when you use Odoo in Japan with its standard features as they are?
- The address fields on the partner master that holds customers and suppliers are in a foreign order
- The prefecture data is not in Japanese
- The field order on the eCommerce form where a customer enters an address is the foreign one too
- PDF prints of quotations, invoices, purchase orders and the like do not put 「様」 or 「御中」 after the partner's name
- Receivable and payable due dates cannot be proposed for payment terms such as 「20日締翌月20日払」, cut off on the 20th and paid on the 20th of the following month
- A monthly summary invoice cannot be issued
There is plenty more, and it varies by industry. So far we have led the creation of a module that puts the partner master's address fields in the Japanese order and a module that gives the prefecture names in Japanese, both driven by us.
If I ask you to build a feature anyone in Japan can use, do I get charged?
You do ^^
This is about work you commission from us. Building a feature with general use cases in mind means working the design through and testing it properly, and that unavoidably costs money. So financial support from customers is indispensable.
That said, we do want a customer's share to be as small as it can be where a feature answers a need that is general in Japan. So when we build a general-purpose feature we have, in practice, carried 30% to 70% of the cost ourselves. There is no fixed formula for the split, but we propose a reasonable one according to how general the feature is, how much freedom there is in the schedule, and so on.
Even so, some readers may feel that paying for a feature other companies then get for free does not sit right with them. To anyone who feels that, we would ask you to spare a thought for how much of the open source Odoo functionality you use — Odoo itself and the community modules — became free to use because someone before you carried the cost. We owe a great deal to the customers who understand that and support open source activity.
Please take part in the Japanese localisation activity
Open-source-minded service providers especially!
With the Japanese translation work we called widely on the providers and communities around us to take part, and we want to invite the same participation in building features for Japan.
In my experience very few people in Japan answer a call like this, and most providers take the free-rider stance of consuming what the community produces. For various reasons an open source culture has unfortunately not grown up in Japan, I think — so I want to put out as much information as I can, get the benefits of open source recognised, and keep calling (insistently?) for people to take part.
The benefits of open source activity:
- It keeps costs down (the load is spread across the community, and you avoid building what already exists)
- Your technical skills improve (reviewing code, and having yours reviewed, makes you notice things)
- You get to meet people outside your own company (you could get to know Tim and me)
- It feeds your own marketing (post what your community activity produces on social media; deals do come out of it)
Conversely, if you disregard benefits like these and close yourself off in a proprietary direction, isn't that going to be read from the outside, from now on, as either having no technical ability or wanting to fence information in?
Related article: How to get around Odoo, 2018 edition (tips for adopting Odoo efficiently with open source)
Localisation of Odoo for Japan has started moving