Software ‘pidgin’ developed for Afrikaans
A computer software to translate the Dutch-linked Afrikaans, one of South Africa's 11 official languages, has been developed by a South African firm, a statement said on Thursday.
The Afrikaans "pidgin" version of the Instant Messaging (IM) programme, released this week on the international website of the award-winning software translators, the Translators.org.za, would give programme users free access to all of its features in their own language, the statement said.
"It took about three months to translate 12,000 words and to accomplish the project", the director of the non-governmental agency, Dwayne Bailey, said, and added that the project aimed at "giving communication tools to people."
Translate.org.za won the 2006 ICT Achiever's Award.
"Now South Africans can chat in Afrikaans without having to use the software in English," it said.
Afrikaans pidgin can interact with multiple networks, such as Google Talk, MSN, Jabber, AIM, Yahoo and other protocols through multiple IM services, enabling its users to interact with others who do not have the same software installed on their computers.
There are about 10 million Afrikaans speakers in South Africa.
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