Written by: Brian Herbert
Software developers will often times write their code in such a way that it can be adapted for people who are different culturally, speaking various languages and using different alphabets. Being able to use software in ones native language is valuable in that it gives the user a more natural way to use the product. In most cases, “just learn English” isn’t an effective solution!
Internationalization is most often done by translating text in a single file or by running text through a machine translation service like SYSTRAN. While I won’t get into the topic of developing software for localization, I would like to stress that most localized software and websites are either literal translations or machine translations. In the case of software, this could potentially be an issue in specific edge cases. The pitfalls for literal machine translations of websites should be obvious since the mechanics of different languages are different and some words carry different weight in different cultures. When large bodies of text are translated using a machine, there are bound to be some not-so-subtle issues.
The best way to localize software is to have dedicated speakers contributing to the project. Besides software from large companies like Microsoft, localized projects are more than likely going to be open source for languages such as Swahili or more obscure languages like Kamba or Luo. I’ll highlight some software that has been localized using this method. As a disclaimer, since my Franch and Swahili are poor and I can’t speak a bit of Afrikaans or Zulu, I cannot test these out for myself. Feel free to leave comments if any of these haven’t been localized as well as I think they should be.
OpenOffice is an open source (FREE!) project that has been localized for a number of languages including French, Swahili, Afrikaans and Zulu. This project is supported by many dedicated volunteers since this is one of the few viable alternatives to Microsoft Office on the PC. Check this list for the latest list of supported languages. If you haven’t tried this yet, it’s better than paying a lot of money for licenses, asking for donations or pirating Office if you don’t have to. OpenOffice and Microsoft Office share the same fundamentals so anyone learning on OpenOffice should be able to figure out Microsoft Office.
Just because OpenOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office doesn’t mean it should be dismissed. However, most Africans will not be able to use it in their native tongue or national language (unless it’s French or English). A list of language packs for Office 2007 can be found at the bottom of this page. It’s too bad that Microsoft isn’t supporting more languages in their latest versions of Office. To Microsoft’s credit, language support is available for older versions of Office for Swahili, Afrikaans, Zulu and others. Check the bottom half of this list to see if your language is supported.
Beyond productivity in an office suite, there are localized options for web browsing. Mozilla Firefox has been fully localized in a number of languages including Afrikaans. However, it doesn’t look as though other languages (besides French) have been introduced to the browser. Since this is an open source project, however, this is a possibility in the future. Hopefully this will happen sooner than later!
This is far from a comprehensive list of software and projects localizing in African languages. The Kamusi Project has a small list of Swahili projects. The International Development Research Centre has a number of projects researching the possibility of getting software in the languages of African people.
- 
Recent Comments