Hi Charles,
I had requested to start an OpenOffice L10 project for Yoruba language over
a year ago and i had not heared back from you directly as to if this was
approved. To my surprise i ran across the message trail below and found
that the project was actually approved as a level I project. I dont believe
i ever received any email about this.
Please advice how to best proceed.
Thanks
Abayomi
Message trail
------------------
from [David Fraser] [Permanent Link][Original]
Subject: Re: [l10n-dev] [native-lang]: Proposal for the Yoruba Translation
project
From: David Fraser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 09:47:09 +0200
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Abayomi Onibudo wrote:
The need for Yoruba translation:
The Yoruba localization is a very important and urgent project required to
move ahead on the modernization of the Yoruba language and culture. It is
estimated that nearly 50 million people use the Yoruba language in some
contexts. Of this number, over 20 million are native speakers of the
language in its original homeland in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, while another
5 million native speakers are dispersed all over the world. Encarta
Encyclopedia (http://www.encarta.com) lists Yoruba as the second largest
language group in Africa. The Yoruba language if not made as localization in
computing is endangered because it is currently not supported in the
Information Age and may suffer extinction as we move to the next age. Taking
a quick look at linguistic or national communities of similar size, one can
see that, at over 20 million in population, the Yoruba are roughly
equivalent to the total numbers of Dutch speakers (21 million, including
Flemish speakers in Belgium). It is more than the total population of
Australia (18 million) or the total number of speakers of Hungarian (14
million) or Greek (12 million). Therefore, like most of the above peoples,
the Yoruba people should have the rights to enjoy the benefit of the
advancement of computerization by having their localization realized.
Fantastic to see this proposal!
Project Goals:
The project will be primarily concerned with using Unicode
editors to perform translation of OpenOffice to Yoruba.
Has this work been done before anywhere? Surely once the Unicode work is
complete something like POEdit should work fine...
By the way did you know about using PO files to translate OpenOffice.org?
Other specific Objectives will include:
Develop keyboard-mapping software that supports the
Yoruba character set;
Implement Yoruba character font support for the X11 and Windows
platforms.
Are you aware of other initiatives like mentioned in this message on the
a12n-forum?
http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/a12n-forum/msg00235.html
As a by-product of our work, we will also:
- create a dictionary of computer/IT terminology in Yoruba
that will be accessible to the public over the Internet;
- develop/implement software to manage the translation
process using web-based tools to provide a simple, widely
available solution for non-technical translators;
I'd suggest that you don't have to re-invent the wheel yourself!
I'm busy working on a translation / translation management web system myself
which works for any project that uses PO files (which OpenOffice.org can be
translated with too). More details to follow...
- develop a website to serve as a point of reference for
translating other open source software into the Yoruba
language and host future efforts to translate other
components of the Open Source software into Yoruba.
Great. We've definitely found it works well to have one central place for
co-ordination translation of different programs into a given language.
This project will deliver:
- Openoffice applications needed by an average computer
user in the Yoruba language;
- a package of open-source Unicode fonts supporting the
Yoruba character set;
- a keyboard layout for the Yoruba alphabet;
- documentation and tools providing information on how to
install configure and use OpenOffice with support for Yoruba language.
This is why you are allowed to create a Yoruba native-lang project now; we
have a new
"classification"; Level 1 projects being early localization projects
only, level 2 projects being full-fledged native-lang projects with much
more ressources and a real community.
Desired domain name is http://yo.openoffice.org where yo is the ISO code for
Yoruba
+1. Great to hear about this, I hope you guys can get it going!
David
from [Charles-H.Schulz] [Permanent Link][Original]
Subject: Re: [native-lang] [native-lang]: Proposal for the Yoruba
Translation project
From: "Charles-H.Schulz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:19:18 +0100
If-filter0: Y
Mailing-list: contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]; run by ezmlm
Organization: OpenOffice.org
Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hello Abayomi,
you are welcome to create a Native-Lang Project for the Yoruba language.
It will be a level 1 project. I'll file the issue asap.
Please contact the L10N folks to start the localization. Louis
Suarez-Potts, our Community Manager and NLC co-lead, will give you
further instructions from now on.
Don't hesitate to use the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list and [EMAIL PROTECTED], you will
get many help and lots of work will be done through them.
Regards,
Charles-H. Schulz.
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from [Jonathon Blake] [Permanent Link][Original]
Subject: [discuss] Re: [l10n-dev] [native-lang]: Proposal for the Yoruba
Translation project
From: Jonathon Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:35:59 -0800
Mailing-list: contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]; run by ezmlm
Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-to: Jonathon Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Abayomi wrote:
Develop keyboard-mapping software that supports the Yoruba character set;
+1
Implement Yoruba character font support for the X11 and Windows platforms.
Are there any glyphs used in writing Yoruba that are not part of the
Unicode Standard? [I don't remember this coming up on any A10N
lists.]
If they are, then file a request with the unicode consortium for those
glyphs. It might be easier to submit a request for a block of
characters for African Languages, than a request for two or three
individual characters.
- develop/implement software to manage the translation process using
web-based tools to provide a simple, widely available solution for
non-technical translators;
There are enogh challenges in localizing software, without having to
re-implement the wheel. By using the same toolset as other
localization projects use, you will have somebody who can answer
questions, when you run into problems. With tools that you write
yourself, that might not be the case.
[ Translate.org.za has some web based translation tools in
development. I don't know when they will be publicly released,
though.]
The KiSwahili localization project has written about some of the
problems that they encountered, in localizing OOo.
- develop a website to serve as a point of reference for
translating other open source software into the Yoruba language
+1
- a package of open-source Unicode fonts supporting the
Yoruba character set;
+1.
Suggestion: include support for more African languages than just
Yoruba. [Most fonts have limited, or no support for African
languages.]
- a keyboard layout for the Yoruba alphabet;
I thought I had come across an alleged standard Yoruba Keyboard.
- documentation and tools providing information on how to
install configure and use OpenOffice with support for Yoruba language.
Documentation is the hard part. The easy way to start is by
translating existing material.
xan
jonathon
--
Monolingualism is a curable disease.
Carlos Fuentes
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