LL-L "Resources" 2003.10.25 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 25.OCT.2003 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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From: Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>
Subject: A great promise for our languages

As someone said, seeing your language written can be a help when you
want to learn to write in that language

A lot of people are using computers today - especially the younger
generation - so maybe it would be an advantage to let them run their
favorite applications in their own language, but as we all know
applications like Microsoft Office will never be translated into these
languages because Microsoft don't expect to earn money doing that. That
has so far been a big problem for Icelandic and Nynorsk Norwegian.

But there is another solution becoming viable: open source software.

It is possible for everyone to translate an open source application and
contribute the translation back to the developer community. This is what
just happened with OpenOffice [1] and Danish support. [2]; a group of
voluntiers translated OpenOffice into Danish and gave the translation
back to the community.

OpenOffice is a free office suite that pretty much matches Microsoft
Office - especially the much improved 1.1 version which was just
released. Here is a picture of OpenOffice running on my Red Hat Linux
desktop:

http://www.gnome.org/~kenneth/Stellingwarfs-spellcheck-2.png

If for instance the frisians living in Fryslân wanted OpenOffice
translated into frisian they could form a group of voluntiers who could
to the work (maybe with support from the provincy).

I think open source software shows great promise for our minority
languages.

On a side note, open source is becoming very populair and the German
Government for one is looking into migrating to open source software.

<quote from www.gnomedesktop.org>
The European Union offers the following 148 page migration guide [3] for
going from Windows to GNU/Linux. Focus of the article is on migrating to
Red Hat/Ximian systems.

In related new the German government has released the following 418 page
migration guide [4], focusing on things like Samba/Wine, protocols,
document standards etc.
</quote>

[1] http://www.openoffice.org
[2] http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&ArticleID=21193
[3]
http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/ida/jsps/index.jsp?fuseAction=showDocument&parent=news&documentID=1647
[4] http://www.kbst.bund.de/Anlage303777/pdf_datei.pdf

Extra links:

A project in Norway to localize open source programs and use these
programs in the Norwegian schools:

http://www.skulelinux.no/

The translation status of the GNOME desktop project:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/status/gnome-2.4/index.html

Cheers, Kenneth
--
Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth at gnu.org>

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