It is pleasing to see the plethora of mainstream software either being translated into various languages, or at least the option to translate the product yourself.
On Thursday i begun translating or localizing Skype into Māori.
This will join other popular software that is available or will currently be available in Māori language including:
Open Office and Mozilla are being translated over at www.dear.maori.nz.
Google is now in Māori language – awaiting Google approval.
Windows XP, Office XP
Moodle and many others.
The total corpus of Māori translations that i work with are topping 30,000 definitions. There are duplicates contained in the list which once edited will be made public.
With 3182 translations and over half of them completed at the time of writing, i hope i can distribute Skype Māori file late next week.
I understand from Skype web site that minority language files will not become part of the default installation for the foreseeable future. Perhaps in the future minority languages such Māori will for part of the default installation.
As i am writing this, i am reminded of a media interview i had about 10 or 11 years ago with Ariana Tikao. Ariana asked me about my future vision for Māori language in software and the Internet. I responded with a dream that software including Microsoft Windows would be available in Māori language and that there would be Māori representation on the Internet.
At the time i was almost embarrassed to predict such outrageous claims. It is a sign of the major advancement non English speaking languages have made in technology in the past ten years.
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