South African software
Learning to use a computer can be difficult. But learning to use a computer in a foreign language is almost impossible. It’s this idea – and the desire to promote indigenous languages – that drives Translate.org.za to translate software into local languages.
Over the past eight years the South African organisation has translated everything from web browsers to office suites into a range of South African languages.
Founded by Dwayne Bailey, Translate.org.za’s output is released under open source licences so that anyone can download and use the software. The group also produces a number of software translation tools that are also open source.
Most recently Translate.org.za has made available an Afrikaans version of Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client. The version, downloadable from the Mozilla website, can also be paired with a spell checker in any of the South African languages. The Afrikaans version of Thunderbird can be downloaded from http://af.www.mozillamessaging.com/af/ and all of the local language spellcheckers can be downloaded from the Thunderbird add-ons page.
The local language spellcheckers are also available as Firefox plugins and Firefox can also be downloaded in Afrikaans and a Northern Sotho language pack is also available.
While Translate.org.za already has spellcheckers available in all South African languages, Bailey says that they are in the process of improving these by moving them from the original MySpell platform to the Hunspell platform which makes the checker significantly more precise. One of the first spell checkers on this new platform is the Zulu one which can be used with OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird [http://translate.org.za/blogs/dwayne/en/content/skys-limit-new-zulu-spell-checker].
OpenOffice
Along with web browsers and email clients, the software most often used on the desktop is an office suite. Translate.org.za has also made available an Afrikaans version of OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite, which can be downloaded from http://af.openoffice.org/. For language speakers other than English and Afrikaans there are also spell checkers available for OpenOffice.org in all South African languages. These can be downloaded as extensions from the OpenOffice.org website [http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/taxonomy/term/1130]. At this time the indigenous language versions of OpenOffice.org are still version 2 releases but Bailey says that they are working on version 3 releases at this time.
In addition to the local language spell checkers, Translate.org.za has also produced a comprehensive South African calendar in all official languages. The calendars can be downloaded from the Translate.org.za website and list all public holidays in indigenous languages.
Keyboard
Taking localisation a step further, Translate.org.za has also produced a South African keyboard and fonts to cater for local languages. Many of South Africa’s official languages have alphabets which include additional characters that are not catered for by standard keyboards. Characters with diacritic marks, for example, cannot be typed easily on a standard keyboard so users are forced to leave them out. Often this alters the meaning of the word. To overcome this problem, the organisation has created a keyboard layout for all indigenous languages.
The keyboard software can be used with any keyboard without interfering with its normal operation. The keyboard layout for all South African languages can be downloaded from the Translate.org.za website.
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