Linux.com

Localise!

A small but dedicated Linux promotion group called Open Consultants took the lead in coordinating the localisation process by collaborating with local Linux community. A localisation camp organised last summer gave enough impetus to the community to complete Georgian KDE. A camp planned for early August this year should result in a full Georgian OpenOffice.org.

By September the number of schools equipped with computers will reach 600 (out of 2,300 in the country). The 7,750 machines they employ will run on Deer Leap Linux, which is a local version of Fedora. Other software on these machines will include Georgian-language Firefox, Thunderbird, KDE Edutainmant, and, soon, OpenOffice.org.

These developments demonstrate the potential of FOSS to provide software in a local language, which is one of its key advantages.

Today, approximately 32% of world population or 1.8bn people cannot use a computer in their own language if they rely on Microsoft products -- a figure I derive from looking at a list of the languages in which Windows XP is available and data on the spread of world languages. These people speak both languages with large numbers of speakers, such as Bengali (196 million), Javanese (76 million), and Persian (66 million), and languages whose speakers number in the thousands rather than millions. Clearly, none of them has been tempting enough for Microsoft to localise its products so far, and some may never be, as in addition to offering low numbers of potential customers, they often are spoken by poor or minority people.

Localised FOSS is the best option for computing without relying on a foreign language. Localisation is a serious issue for many non-English-speakers. Why is this issue not especially prominent in discussions concerning FOSS? Perhaps because these discussions are dominated by people who do not suffer from this problem, as either they enjoy the availability of the software they need in their own language, or they have gone through the pain of learning to compute in a foreign language, often also learning the language itself. Those who stand to benefit from localised language versions of FOSS most (those less educated, children) do not participate in the discussions, as they either don't speak foreign languages or, quite obviously, cannot use a computer.

Clearly, the situation is not static, and Microsoft does release new language versions of its products at times, but one should not assume that a single company can cater for the needs of a world where 6,912 languages are spoken.

Localisation groups: remember Georgia and think big. Policy-makers: have as much courage as the Georgians have had. Funders: keep the above numbers in mind, think of other countries like Georgia and support localisation efforts there. The localisation potential of FOSS is yet to be fully explored.