Maori version of Office out tomorrow (fwd)

[Keola Donaghy]

We've talked about doing it for Hawaiian, but it is a daunting task. We've
translated a few programs with between 5,000 and 10,000 strings (each
string being a a single word, short phrase, full sentence or a paragraph),
and each took us several months (usually with a team of 2) to complete.
300,000+ strings for each Windows and Office would be a huge undertaking
for anyone, particularly when you consider maintenance of the translation
as new versions ship. With the FirstClass Client, which we've been
translating into Hawaiian for the past 11 years, each new release contains
10-20% of strings which are either new or contain significant changes and
require retranslation, even when you can leverage previous work. I
received a copy of the new lexicon wordlist from the Maori and even
creating the necessary terminology would be a huge task. Needless to say
we're passing on it ourselves, for now, at least.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone, but for those on the list who have
not done other program localizations, I'd strongly suggest starting with
someone a bit more modest than Windows or Office ;-)  

Keola



Penei ka ‘ölelo a Indigenous Languages and Technology
<ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>:
>Now, if we only had access to that "skin" so we could make one for All the
>Languages. It would be something to keep the Tribal students busy, and, to
>get them involved in developing technology for their tribes. (Yep, we
>always
>see things from the point of view of our personal visions). 


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Keola Donaghy                                           
Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Studies 
Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikolani             keola at leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu 
University of Hawai'i at Hilo           http://www2.hawaii.edu/~donaghy/
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