[Indic-computing-users] FEATURE: It's no tower of Babel, it's South Africa

[Frederick N. (FN) <fr...@by...>]

 	http://www.tacticaltech.org/asiasource/blog

It's no tower of Babel, it's South Africa
By Frederick Noronha

Countries from the South, emerging from a number of problems, can seem 
like a Tower of Babel. But when it comes to coping with diversity, Dwayne 
Bailey's story from South Africa makes the point nicely. Free/Libre and 
Open Source Software can indeed offer interesting solutions even to 
smaller languages.

From 2001, this slim South African started the Translate.org.za project.

WIKIPEDIA notes: South Africa has eleven official languages, which is 
second only to India. As a result, there are many official names for the 
country. It also recognises eight non-official languages (Fanagalo, 
Lobedu, Northern Ndebele, Phuthi, Sign Language, Khoe, Nama, and San).?

Dwayne explains what this is all about: "At Translate.org.za we're 
localising Free and Open Source Software into 11 South African languages. 
One is English, it's quite an easy one (smiles). The others are Afrikaans, 
Zulu, Khosa, Venda, Tsonga, Tswana, Siswati, Northern Sotho, Southern 
Sotho, Ndebele."

All these languages use the Roman script. Bailey (33) points out that this 
makes the task easier. But it is a heavy task nonetheless. Some South 
African languages have special characters, but these are Romanised. "We 
have no problems with fonts or keyboards. With the Asian languages, it's 
the other way round, and there have been big problems."

Bailey sees the project as doing well. Open Office, the free alternative 
word processor, has been done in four languages. Bailey expects six more 
to be completed by June 2005. Mozilla, the attention-grabbing useful 
web-browser, has also been done in seven languages. KDE, the desktop 
environment, has been done in four languages but fell behind because of a 
"changed idea of what should be done". Gnome has been completed in three 
languages, and the team is busy doing Fedora in three more.

What's the secret for the apparent success of such an ambitious and, in 
many ways, daunting project? "Invent what you're doing. Nobody else is 
doing that. We have social objectives, that helps us define what we do. 
Otherwise you get pulled and pushed by everyone."

Our golden rules, says Bailey, is that applications chosen for translation 
should be focussed at the end-user. "Our logic that (it should benefit) 
the people whom language would most affect. Someone who could program 
could have probably mastered English already. Localisation must be aimed 
at the end-user."

Besides, Bailey clearly favours Free Software. "We're using donor's and 
state money. So, the work should be available to the people and Free 
Software allows us to do that. If we were using proprietary software, we 
would probably still be negotiating for the right to do the software.

Lastly, he prefers cross-platform tools. Ones that are able to run on both 
Windows and GNU/Linux. "Clearly, the majority of people still use Windows. 
It's not our job to change that, though my personal views might be 
different," says he.

Translate.co.za has been helping other countries that would like to learn 
from their experiences. And mistakes.

How easy, or difficult, is it to actually localise a Roman script 
language? Says Bailey: "If you can avoid keyboard stuff, then you just 
look at translating. It's very easy to translate, but difficult to 
translate well. That's where we start looking at things in building 
glossaries."

"We want people to translate, but not everyone should be doing it. Like 
the Linux kernel -- everyone wants to add code, but not all are allowed to 
do so (unless of proven competence). There are barriers to entry," says 
he.

Bailey's approach is to usually reject an English word as an easy way out 
while translating. "If it's already in the culture, either in English or 
corrupted English, then it's fine," says he.

To give an example: the team insisted that there was no word for 
'password' in Zulu. They insisted there was no equivalent for 
'proxy-server'. "Proxy is someone acting on your behalf. The Zulu have a 
word for guards that stand at the gate of the king's court. People often 
don't think long enough and hard enough about concepts." Some languages 
don't have a positive connotations for witches and wizards. It really 
means helper.

"In fact, the best people to translate are not computer people but 
language people," he says. Finding people who are excited about their 
language, or care passionately for them, make for the best chances of 
success.

How long does it take? A good translator can manage approx a thousand 
words a day. So, Open Office, with its 75,000 words would need some 75 
working days. Then, the documentation is an additional 500,000 words. 
Quality assurance would take some more time.

What's the kind of feedback he has received? Most has come from the 
language of Afrikaans. "Most just accept. But sometimes out of the 800,000 
words you translated, they'll pick one and haggle. You could have 200 
emails about opinions and yet no valid feedback," says he, undaunted by 
what can be a thankless job at times.

Earlier, this project was founded by the millionaire-founded Shuttleworth 
Foundation. Now too, it gets some funds from there.

Says Dwayne: "When we started we made lots of mistakes. Nobody else who 
interacts with us makes the same mistakes. Since we are dealing with 11 
languages, the situation in India (with its multiplicity of languages) is 
the closest thing to the work we have to do." But one shortcoming he sees 
with his own project is getting out the results adequately to potential 
users. 
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Frederick Noronha (FN)                    Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia
Freelance Journalist                      P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436
http://fn.swiki.net                       http://fn-floss.notlong.com
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