Summary

The Translate.org.za project, initiated in 2001, is focused on localizing key Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications into the 11 official languages of South Africa by using FOSS platforms and tools. It sees the localization of application software as a means whereby local people can be empowered with information and communications technology (ICT) awareness and skills thereby enriching their lives. The FOSS applications that have been localized include OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, KDE and GNOME.

The project has created tools, documentation and methodologies for localization. These resources are themselves released as FOSS and made readily available to assist new localization efforts in other software and languages. The resulting localized software from the Translate project are incorporated as localized versions of the applications by their respective FOSS projects and are disseminated internationally for use, taking the reach and impact of this project beyond South Africa.

The FOSS benefits of cost savings, quality tools and development environment are all experienced by this project. This project is the first large multi-language localization project in the world. As a result of its success, proprietary software vendors in South Africa have begun to localize their products too in order not to lose competitive advantage to FOSS. Localization has become a social requirement and this will benefit the people. It will also help enhance the image of the local languages thereby preserving and increasing their usage.

The project is an ongoing one. More FOSS applications are being added to the list for localization into the official languages of South Africa.

 
Background of Organization

Translate is a project run by the Zuza Software Foundation (Zuza), an established non-profit South African organization. In the past Zuza had been mainly involved in the localization of FOSS but recently it had branched into other areas. Zuza has to date undertaken a number of key projects with Translate being one of them. The projects that Zuza had been involved with are connected with the language and culture elements of FOSS. Zuza has built skills in these areas and are focusing hard on creating FOSS solutions for languages and bringing FOSS thinking to certain language and culture specific areas of life.

Objectives of Project

The Zuza Foundation was established to develop FOSS to empower and enrich the lives of the people. One important way to achieve this is to make FOSS available in local languages and in line with this, the main objectives of the Translate and related projects are to:

• provide software in local languages
• encourage multlingualism
• preserve languages
• create free language resources
• create free tools that can help the above

The primary target groups of this project are:

• mother tongue language speakers
• language practitioners
• language users

The key partners of the project are:

• Department of Communications (DOC), South Africa – the principal sponsor of the Translate project; other donors include the Shuttleworth Foundation and Hewlett-Packard.
• Volunteers – these are the native language speakers who help out in the localization of the software, as well as spread the word.
• The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of South Africa – the organization that provides financial management for DOC and input on language-related matters through their Human Language Technology Division in the Meraka Institute.

FOSS Application

Description

The Translate project selects certain key FOSS applications and localizes them into the eleven South African national languages using FOSS platforms and tools. The FOSS applications that have been localized include OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, KDE and GNOME. The criteria used for choosing the applications to localize are:

• end-user focused, so as to benefit the end users the most
• able to run on GNU/Linux and MS-Windows, so as to bring benefit to the majority of computer users who still use the MS-Windows platform
• FOSS, so that the work done here can be reused for other language needs

The tools and methodology developed for the localization of these applications are themselves released as FOSS.

Choice of FOSS

FOSS applications are chosen for the localization rather than proprietary ones as it usually takes a long time to get the necessary agreement (that is if the proprietary vendors agree at all) for the latter and non-disclosure agreements will probably have to be signed. Furthermore, the availability of a localized proprietary software will increase the value of the proprietary vendor's product but this may not benefit the people as not everyone can have access to the proprietary software. Thus, as this project makes use of public money and volunteer labour, it is deemed proper that it localizes FOSS applications so that all the people can have access to them.

Development and Implementation

The project has created resources such as a translation toolkit, documentation and a translation portal to assist translators and programmers.

The Translate Toolkit is a toolkit to convert between different translation formats (such as gettext-based .po formats, OpenOffice.org formats and Mozilla formats). This makes it possible to stay in one format across all of the localization. By staying in one format a translator can make the best use of their tools and not have to adapt to each project. Other tools are available in the Toolkit, for example, those to help process and validate localizations. The Toolkit has now been merged into the WordForge FOSS project.

Documentation from the project has been gathered and consolidated so that other people can have a single reference resource for localization. This is maintained in a project wiki. The documents are targeted at a level above project localization and thus address broader issues such as strategy and terminology development, etc.

The Pootle portal (http://pootle.wordforge.org) has been created to help people manage their translation projects and teams, to perform web-based translation and to manage offline translation. The aim is to lower the entry barrier so that more people can become involved in software localization, especially minority language groups that might not have access to a broad skills base.

All of the software above is written in Python and is therefore cross-platform since Python is available on FOSS as well as proprietary platforms. The software itself is released under a FOSS license.

Deployment

The products from the localization are incorporated into their respective FOSS projects and disseminated from the individual project websites or bundled with FOSS operating system distributions, both commercial and non-commercial. All of SuSE, Red Hat and Ubuntu GNU/Linux distributions contain the localizations and a number of vendors include OpenOffice.org with the localizations on their computers.

Impact

The localization of an application is an important social issue and has an important impact on the local users. It is important to be able to provide computers in the native language of the users and make it possible for them to use a computer without having to learn English. As a spinoff to this, the availability of software in the users' native languages is changing their perception of their own languages; they now see them as modern and worthy of using and preserving.

The project has created a number of tools to make the localization of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org more compliant with the FOSS methodology as well as the documentation of the processes and these two steps have made it easier for many other teams in Africa and the world to localize software.

The project has provided input and guidance to other localization teams through training events held at Africa Source I and II and Asia Source. Projects such as KiLinux, localizing GNU/Linux into Swahili, make use of the Translate Toolkit and received training and guidance from Translate.org.za. The Cambodian project, KhmerOS, also make use of the Toolkit and it helped document the tools.

This Translate project is the first large multi-language localization project in South Africa. This project has stimulated proprietary vendors to localize their software in order to stay competitive to FOSS. The project has thus achieved the objective of making the software industry see localization as a requirement and not just as an option.

Lessons Learned

The important lesson learned is that if efforts are made to localize a piece of FOSS in a local language, in addition to the availability of the localized FOSS, competing proprietary software vendors will localize their software too as they do not want to lose market advantage to FOSS.

The project also found that to encourage the use of FOSS, it has to be targeted at and packaged for the end users. FOSS itself is unique and different from proprietary software and this difference is often not exploited enough to advance FOSS usage.

Current Status of Project

The project is ongoing. OpenOffice.org 2.0 had been released in the 11 South African languages (Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu) with Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird to follow suit.

Benefits and Challenges

The use of FOSS in the localization effort has provided tremendous savings for the project. The operating platforms, the localization and translation tools as well as the target software themselves are FOSS.

The general benefits that FOSS conveys to software and development environments in this project include flexibility and speed, control of the outputs and access to helpful developers.

The biggest challenge faced in this project is the employment and the management of localizers who are often not very computer literate.

Other Information

The Translate project site at Sourecforge provides more technical and documentation details of the project. The Sourceforge site is used to host the Translate Toolkit.

Conclusion

The Translate project has succeeded in localizing several important FOSS applications into the eleven South African official languages. FOSS platforms and tools themselves are utilized in the localization effort and this has resulted in cost savings and the ability to produce quality products quickly. Apart from the localized applications, the project has also produced important localization and translation toolkits as well as documentation that will help other localization projects.

The availability of the localized FOSS software applications has prompted some proprietary software vendors to produce local versions of their software in order not to lose out. All these have contributed to multilinguism in South Africa and benefited the local people, making them more aware of the usefulness of their local languages.

Contact Information

Project: Translate.org.za
Organization: Zuza Software Foundation
Contact Person: Dwayne Bailey
Street Address: 63A Wenning St, Groenkloof, Pretoria, 0181 South Africa
Postal Address: Box 28364, Sunnyside, 0132 South Africa
Email: dwayne@translate.org.za
Phone: +27 (0) 12 460 1095
Fax: +27 (0) 12 460 1095

Websites

Translate.org.za website
http://www.translate.org.za

The Translate project site on Sourceforge
http://translate.sf.net/wiki

The Pootle web portal
http://pootle.wordforge.org

The WordForge project
http://wordforge.org