Debian-Project - Release Goals for Version 2.1
Internationalization
This has been proposed by Thimo Neubauer.We could start to allow multi-language descriptions in the control-files. This gives many mantainers the opportunity to add descriptions in all languages they know. The form could be something like:
Description: <normal english description>
<more description>
Description[de]: <german description>
<more german description>
A form like this could be used to collect non-english descriptions, but we don't need to use them now. The script for creating Packages.gz could weed out the non-english descriptions so that no harm is done[1]. Maybe Debian 4.0 will have a Packages.gz for every supported language, who knows. This is of no importance right now.
We could start the multi-language-business right now before we have to translate 2000+ package-descriptions in 3 months (between two releases), perhaps crossing one or more deadlines.