The World Language Documentation Centre (WLDC)

Wikipedia uses the CLDR data

2009-10-16T09:43:00.000+01:00

I travelled with Siebrand the other day and I learned that in order to provide plural support at translatewiki.net, he uses the information in the CLDR to know what languages need plural support and in what way.

The amazing thing was that for some languages the plural support in MediaWiki is different from the one indicated by the standard. There are also a number of languages where the CLDR did not have information about their plural support.

It is vital that the CLDR and MediaWiki agree on how to provide plural support for languages. The CLDR is the standard and should be complete and correct because it exists for any application.
Thanks,
GerardM

African Locales: completion deadline October 1

2009-09-09T11:54:00.000+01:00

The African Network for Localization (ANLoc) is seeking immediate help to create Locales for 100 African languages. You can view a description of the project at http://www.it46.se/afrigen

You can help in one of three ways:
-> volunteer to work on a locale yourself (the project will help you every step of the way!)
-> play matchmaker - introduce someone who can volunteer for their language
-> spread the word - pass along this message to your networks, so that we increase the chances of finding volunteers for many different languages

THIS YEAR'S DEADLINE to get new languages into the CLDR (Common Locales Data Repository), the international system used to produce all major software on the planet, is OCTOBER 1. So, we need to connect with people who speak languages from all over Africa. And, we need to complete each locale THIS MONTH.

The full list of languages currently in the project is at http://www.it46.se/afrigen/statistics.php . If your favorite language shows any red in any of the bars next to it, please volunteer to help complete the locale!

It's easy to volunteer - just send an email to
locales@africanlocalization.net

The interface to build a locale in your favorite African language is available in English, French, and Swahili. Building a locale only takes a couple of hours. Please tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your networks!

A quick, true story - one Friday last month, someone in Nairobi took a couple of minutes to provide an introduction between the Locales project and a colleague of theirs working on the Kreole Morisyen language of Mauritius. A few emails were exchanged, and by Monday the Morisyen locale was 90% finished. By the end of that week, the locale was complete. On October 1, this locale will be submitted to CLDR. By early next year, Morisyen will be forevermore part of the universe of languages available for information technology development.

It just takes one person and a couple of hours to finish a locale for a language, but it takes a lot of villagers on the web to find that one person. Thanks in advance for volunteering, for introducing contacts, and/or for passing along this message!

Africa helping itself on the Internet

2009-04-16T10:51:00.001+01:00

In December I blogged about the Afrigen project. In this project people are asked to add CLDR information for their language. Now after some months there are results and, I am impressed. Many languages have made a start and the first languages have completed all the information that is looked for in this standard.

In my opinion having quality information in the "Common Locale Data Repository" is a litmus test for readiness of a language for the Internet. The Afrigen project makes completed data available in their subversion.

The CLDR itself distinguishes levels of CLDR support; this includes how lists are sorted, how numbers are written and how a few languages are called. For this project to insist on a complete set of data takes courage but is in my opinion the right thing to do.

There are people who say that a language is on the map when it has its own Wikipedia, in my opinion a complete set of CLDR data has a much wider application.
Thanks,
GerardM

Unintended consequences

2009-01-26T11:05:00.000Z

The fiu-vro Wikipedia is a language in the Võro language. People applied for an IS)-639-3 code recently, and this request was granted; the Võro language is now known under the vro code. This has changed the status of this project considerably. Where it used to be a project that existed because "things happened in those days", the language complies with all the requirements for a new project. We have started the process of renaming the message file for this project and, we have requested the rename of the project.

There is one glitch. The Estonian Wikipedia is known as et.wikipedia.org. The ISO-639-1 et code is connected to the ISO-639-3 est code, and this just became a macro language. Standard Estonian has been given its own code of ekk.

It is quite clear that technically it would be preferable to rename the Estonian Wikipedia. It can be done, this will be demonstrated with the rename of the Võro Wikipedia. From a community perspective it is not so clear cut. People are conservative, they do not like change and there are a lot of references out their to the Estonian Wikipedia.

For the Võro community, it is a badge of pride to have their own ISO-639-3 code. For the Estonian community it is a nuisance.
Thanks,
Gerard

African Language Locales: Call for Volunteers

2008-10-08T16:38:00.002+01:00

ANLoc, the African Network for Localization, has started an initiative
to build locales for over 100 African languages. The project is now
ready to line up volunteers and get to work!

The main requirements for a volunteer are:

1) literate in the target language
2) comfortable using computers
3) can volunteer about 1 or 2 hours
4) finishes what they start

If you are willing and able to help - or if you know anyone who might be, or can contact any networks that might include potential volunteers - please look through these lists of languages. Contact locales@africanlocalization.net if you can work on any language that does not yet have a volunteer:

* West Africa
* Nigeria
* Central Africa
* Tanzania and Indian Ocean
* Great Lakes and Kenya
* Horn of Africa
* Southern Africa

(Note that we do NOT need volunteers for South Africa, because those
languages already have good locales.)

You can also help by letting your colleagues from other African language
communities know about the project.

We want to build all of these locales in a few months, so please let me
know quickly if you can help out!

For more details about the project, please view this presentation:

100 African Language Locales

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: african language)

The GUM3C conference in Bangor

2008-08-27T10:42:00.000+01:00

The GUM3C conference in Bangor has come and gone. Those who were there, were presented with an exquisite set of presentations. The ambiance was lovely and many of the conversations were thought provoking. This conference was in association with the UNESCO and consequently subjects like sign languages, minority languages and support for people who do not speak a dominant language featured prominently.

One of the discussions was a follow on of the presentation by David Crystal, who among other things presented about his work in the advertisement industry. There were a substantial number of people that agreed that advertisments in minority languages give a language an economic underpinning. Consider, the majority of the trade by Welsh companies is in Wales and people respond more favourable to advertisement that target them.

A presentation by Gwerfyl Roberts was thought provoking. As a practioner in this field she told us that people who do not speak and read the dominant language well, will get substandard medical treatment. Gwerfyl is working hard to improve the situation for the people for whom Welsh is their first language, but she agreed that people from the Indian subcontinent suffer from the same problem. Having the inserts for medicines available in as many languages as possible would be one problem to the solution. Providing terminological support as is currently provided by Wikiprofessional is another.

Sign languages and particularly SignWriting is dear to my heart. I could not be more pleased to have a presentation about sign language in India. Michael Morgan presented on how a university for the deaf is being set up, he explained about the problems that exist in India.. One anecdote was about people texting, not coming to a conclusion and in the end, people traveled two days to come to talk for five minutes.. they had to travel back as well. Chris Cox presented about the efforts that have been put into introducing SignWriting into Britain and Ireland.

When you are interested in all the goodies that you missed, you will be pleased to learn that the proceedings of the GUM3C are already published ISBN No. 978-1-84220-115-2 and that the presentations will be posted on the GUM3C website..
Thanks,
Gerard

Farsi, is it a macro language ?

2008-08-13T09:53:00.001+01:00

According to the ISO-639-3, Farsi is a macro language. From my position it is a clear case as the standard says so, it is likely to be so. Farsi is divided in two, Western Farsi and Eastern Farsi. Western Farsi is spoken primarily in Iran and Eastern Farsi in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The problem I have is that several people I respect, independently inform me that in their opinion this division is wrong. Farsi is said to be understood by all. Raising this question is for me about something practical. In this case it is about a request for a fa.wikinews.org.

Let me be clear, I am all in favour of such a project but I do not want to continue an ambiguity about the language. The practical question is, to what extend is it justified to consider Farsi and Dari as separate languages. When they are indeed to be considered separate languages, how different are they. Can it be compared in a similar way as South African and Dutch?

Please share your thoughts ...
Thanks,
Gerard

100 African Language Locales

2008-07-30T10:27:00.000+01:00

ANLoc, the African Network for Localization, is undertaking a project to create Locales for 100 African languages. The following presentation provides an introduction to the initiative:

100 African Language Locales

view presentation (tags: africa language african locales)

¿Hablas español?

2008-07-03T14:44:00.000+01:00

According to Alexa, Spanish is the second language for Wikipedia considering the amount of traffic it generates. There must be MANY people who use the Spanish Wikipedia. When you look at Betawiki, there are 20 people who indicated there wish to help with the localisation of Spanish.

¿Hablas español?

We are looking for people who speak Spanish, who are willing and able to help us with the localisation of MediaWiki into Spanish. Not only the WMF extensions (41.29% ) but also the MediaWiki core messages (91.84%) are in need of attention..

When Spanish is not your "language", you may want to check out how your language is doing..
Thanks,
GerardM

Semantic Search Engine of African Languages

2008-07-03T06:28:00.002+01:00

Here is a thoughtful article about the Kamusi Project from Appfrica: http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/82

The article talks in part about the blog widget we've been developing with one of our Code Africa volunteers, which people can insert in blogs and web pages to perform Kamusi lookups on their sites. The widget is not quite finished, but we put together the following brief presentation for a Barcamp event recently in Nairobi:

Supporting languages that do not have localisation

2008-05-08T11:01:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I had the privilege to present at a workshop in Milan for the ISO. The workshop discussed how ISO will continue its development in the 21th century. A whole day was filled with a mix of people inside and outside of ISO providing their point of view how the world is changing and many kinds of new technology are becoming available and relevant that have the potential to change the current practices at ISO.

Bob Sutor, the IBM vice president for Standards and Open Source opened and discussed everything from Wikis to Second Life. It was a great speech and it opened up the floor for the presenters that followed really well.

The WLDC is about languages and with Debbie's permission, she had seen my presentation ahead of time, I had included the WLDC as a way to establish that I am truly committed to do good for languages.. What we want to do in the WLDC is making a document languages and make a difference by doing this. To help us realise this, I approached Mr Sutor and asked him if IBM could be interested in giving languages a presence in the user interface provided by GNOME or KDE.

This is of a great practical importance; when you write Neapolitan for instance, you do not want an Italian spell checker telling you that what you have written is spelled is incorrectly. The localisation of software is an expensive and time consuming business, it is not realistic to expect that all languages, linguistic entities will be localised. It is however feasible to make Gnome or KDE aware of the language that is used for a document. This is the first step to ensure that this document will be tagged in its meta data appropriately to the language that is used.

I am sure that you know more great arguments why a practical application like this will be of a much bigger benefit then is immediately apparent. So please pitch in with suggestions so that we will be able to produce the proposal that Mr Sutor and IBM just cannot refuse :)
Thanks,
Gerard

A proud moment

2008-05-04T10:35:00.003+01:00

At the Wikimedia Foundation I have been banging the drum for the use of standards. I made some friends and enemies in that way, but the overall effect has been good. Some fights are no longer fought because the result is clear from the start.

At Betawiki, we are developing an extension for MediaWiki called Babel. The tool is to be used on the user pages indicating the self assessed skills in the languages a person knows. The texts are shown in the language itself.

When we do not have a translated text yet, we are still able to use the native name of that language courtesy of the data available in the CLDR. The standard is not complete, and I asked if it was possible to change the data in our database. I was told no. "The data belongs to a standard and, the data should be improved at source".

I do agree with this sentiment. I have written to someone active in the CLDR if there is an interest in collaboration. I am happy and proud of this turn of events. I hope that we are welcome :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Of ancient and historical languages

2008-04-17T20:16:00.005+01:00

According to the records at SIL the documentation for Ancient Greek (to 1453), ISO-639 code grc, has been tagged as type "Historical". This means that the language is dead. Latin lat on the other hand is considered to be "Ancient". Both Latin and Ancient Greek are still taught in schools to kids who get a classic western education.

According to the definition Latin is ancient and consequently it must have gone extinct more then a millenium ago. However, the Roman Catholic Church has continued to use Latin as its language. It maintains a dictionary of Latin modern vocabulary. Surely Latin may be old but it never went extinct.

Ancient Greek does not qualify as ancient because 1453 means less then a millenium. Ancient Greek is taught in school. Books, like the Harry Potter books are translated in Ancient Greek. As far as I understand it, there has not been a similar usage for Ancient Greek as it existed for Latin.

When you are to tag a text using the ISO-639 codes and its definitions, a modern text in Latin or Ancient Greek cannot be tagged. The first issue is that the definitions clearly limit the time when texts are to be considered in a historical or ancient language. The second issue is that in order to write a modern text neologisms are needed and/or existing words with a modern meaning are needed to express modern concepts.

When the definitions preclude the tagging of the modern expressions of Latin or Ancient Greek, it means that either a new code is needed to indicate the modern expression or the defintions of these languages are wrong.

I would argue that when a language has not seen continued use, the modern text is assigned a separate code. It is distinctly different and by tagging it as such, it may be clear to the reader of a text that the understanding of such a text does not reflect the language and the time when it was a living language. I would argue for a separate ISO-639-3 code.

My question is what do you think about this ?
Thanks,
GerardM

WLDC Conference 2008

2008-04-07T12:36:00.001+01:00

The World Language Documentation Centre, together with Bangor University and Language Standards for Global Business, wishes to announce a major multidisciplinary conference to celebrate 2008 as the International Year of Languages

August 22-23, 2008

To be held at the Bangor University Business Management Conference Centre

This event is supported by the Welsh Assembly Government and the UK National Committee to UNESCO

The United Nations announced that 2008 would be the International Year of Languages, recognizing the importance of multilingualism in supporting international understanding. The GUM3C conference will attempt to bridge the communications gap between academia and industry, asking (and attempting to answer) such questions as:

How can industry help academia prioritize its research in the 3 Ms?

What are the developing standards, who are developing them and will they be used?

How will this generate peace, prosperity and global understanding?

Mor info, details on submission of papers or workshops as well as conference registration can be obtained from http://www.gum3c.org

online African dictionaries planning meeting

2008-03-31T16:05:00.001+01:00

The Kamusi Project (www.kamusiproject.org) is pleased to announce that
we are about to begin work on PALDO: the Pan-African Living Dictionary
Online. PALDO will build on the Kamusi architecture to create an
interlinked multilingual dictionary for African languages, creating a
powerful communications tool that will be useful throughout the African
continent.

The first step for PALDO will be to program the database, multilingual
tools, and enhanced user interface. This work will begin on April 2
with our partners at Kasahorow (www.kasahorow.org), at a meeting in
Accra, Ghana. This meeting will be simulcast LIVE ONLINE, and the
transcript will also be posted on a special blog at
www.kamusiproject.org/paldo

WE INVITE YOU TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MEETING by logging into the live
chat session or commenting on the blog, beginning at 9 a.m. Ghana time
on April 2. The timezone for Accra is GMT.

We are particularly hoping for participation from:
1) computer programmers and database specialists
2) linguists, lexicographers, and people with an interest in languages
3) users of the Kamusi Project, kasahorow, or other online dictionaries
4) people interested in helping shape the next generation of tools for
African languages

If you would like to participate in this meeting online, please visit
www.kamusiproject.org/paldo for more information.

If you are in Accra and would like to attend in person, the meeting will
be held at the Kofi Annan Centre, beginning at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, April 2.

NOTE: THE DATE OF THE MEETING MAY BE MOVED BACKWARDS ONE DAY IF A 45
MINUTE FLIGHT CONNECTION IS MISSED IN ROME. If the meeting is
rescheduled for April 3, we will place a notice on
www.kamusiproject.org/paldo

Evolution in the Open Source world

2008-03-20T14:27:00.005Z

OmegaT is a great open source CAT tool. It is written in Java, it has a growing group of users and Sabine Cretella, who is my weather cock for what is happening in this space, has been a long time champion of the software. As OmegaT makes sense to me for several of the things I am involved in, I have invested and I have been looking for funding to expand its functionality.

Yesterday I was astounded by Sabine. "Anaphraseus", she says, "is a CAT tool that does the things that are critical to me. It allows me to translate into Neapolitian properly; it allows me to enter nap, the ISO-639-3 code and consequently I am able to build my translation memory without having to remember what code I used in stead. They do not have a proper TMX yet, but they are working on it. Now given that I can finally work properly in my language, who cares that I do not have it yet?"

Anaphraseus used to be called "Open Wordfast" and makes use of the Open Office macro tool. It uses the same translation memory format like Wordfast, it supports text segmentation and it is great for proof reading.

Sabine has been investigating Anaphraseus's functionality and so far she is quite pleased. When I asked her why the change, she said that she had been asking for the ISO 639-3 support for almost two years, it was not forthcomming and Anaphaseus is as good for the job.
Thanks,
Gerard

A tale of dictionaries

2008-02-07T19:45:00.001Z

My sister is a student of the (Western) Farsi language. She has been studying the language and the culture of Iran for several years now and for me it has been an education for me as well. I have learned new dishes, I have met wonderful people and listened to beautiful music. When she came home from her fist visit to Iran, she brought with her a dictionary by Mr Afshin Afkari. This Farsi Dutch and a Dutch Farsi dictionary has been an important resource for her study.

At a party a few weeks ago, I met Mr Afkari for the first time. Talking with people who are interested and involved in dictionaries is a rare treat for me, so I had a splendid time. We promised to meet again and we did. We talked long into the night and I was happy that I could help him with some (minor for me) issues with computers and Internet.

The most relevant thing I was able to do was to help him with his dictionary. The last time he was able to work on it was in the day when he still worked in Wordperfect 5.1. These days were long gone, and in the more then 10 years that passed he was not been able to convert his data into a contemporary format. He had asked many people before me but the problem was that the standard conversion programs do not deal with a text with mixed Latin and Arab script.

All that I did was ask a friend who I deals quite regularly with such issues. He found me a 43 EURO program and this program did the job. The dictionary has now returned from its slumber and Mr Afkari is considering again what next he will do with his dictionary. He wants to do an update, build a spell checker and maybe making it available under a Free license.

I told this story to friend of mine. His question was if I had a dictionary Sorani -English for him. I had to disappoint him but it does not mean that I cannot ask around about the existence of such a dictionary. I expect that such a resource exists somewhere in an ivory or other tower. When it does, and when it can becomes available, many people will be as happy as my sister is with her dictionary.
Thanks,
Gerard

Update on the MediaWiki localisation

2008-02-01T23:01:00.000Z

BetaWiki is a success. The numbers prove it; in a year the number of supported languages has increased from 266 to 307 and all the indicators have been steadily improving. When you consider that this is a project run by volunteers, it is pretty amazing. It is for this reason that I am so happy that UNESCO acknowledged BetaWiki for what it is; a community success story. BetaWiki is doing really well for the major languages but also for languages like Telugu, Marathi, Northern Sotho and Tajik. Martin's stirling effort for Swahili is not reflected yet in these numbers, his contributions will be life on all Wikimedia Foundation's wikis in the coming days. :)

I think you will agree with me that with improved localisation, it will be easier to reach out with MediaWiki to the readers of the world. We want more people to read and write in Swahili, Comorian, Maithili, Basque, Piedmontese...

In 2008, the year of languages, we have to celebrate our achievements. I am sure that projects like BetaWiki will help languages improve their presence on the Internet. Wikipedia, wikis are geeky, they attract young people. When young people continue to express themselves in their mother tongue, their language and culture is alive and well.

This week a Wikipedia was requested for Mingrelian and Maithili... As communities continue to form to write their Wikipedia in their language, we will be able to bring more information to more people in their language.

This year is still young :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Localizing MediaWiki: a translator's perspective

2008-01-24T09:51:00.000Z

The push is on to localize the core 500 MediaWiki messages for numerous languages. The language committee responsible for the creation of new Wikipedia projects has made the sensible decision that a language cannot have its own Wikipedia unless and until the core user interface is available in that language. As a big side benefit, MediaWiki is used to run thousands of other sites, so a single localization effort can catalyze all sorts of projects in a given language.

The Swahili Wikipedia has about 6500 articles, but only about 100 MediaWiki messages had been translated. The schizophrenic Swanglish interface produces gems like this: "Ficha logged-in users | Fichua my edits." It was beyond time to bring sw.wikipedia up to standard, so I decided to give it a go. In the interests of letting localizers for other languages know what they are getting into, here is a brief report on the process:

1) First, you need to get yourself approved on Betawiki, the site that oversees all the translations. You will need to create an account and join the language project. Thankfully, the people on the site are friendly, helpful, and fast.

2) You will need to download the files (unless you want to do all the work online, which is NOT recommended) and use a special translation assistance tool such as the free POedit or OmegaT. To download, go to the Translate page and select the following options:

I want to: Export translation in Gettext format

Group: MediaWiki messages (most used)

Language: [select your language]

Limit: 500 messages per page

Click "Fetch" and you will end up with a long, messy-looking document. Copy and paste that into a text editor like TextPad, save it in standard text format with a .po extension (the filename should be something like mylanguage.po), open it with your translation software, and voila!

Actually, not so fast. It took me a painful half hour or more to figure out that the file had to be saved in "UTF-8" rather than "Unicode," before I could actually open the file with POedit.

3) Let the games begin! At first, the translation goes very quickly, as you breeze through terms like "January" and "Comment." However, you soon start hitting challenging terms. The less of a computer presence your language already has, the more of a challenge the terms will be. "View source." "Full resolution." "Metadata." "Disambiguation pages." And long chunks like this:

This page is currently protected because it is included in the following {{PLURAL:$1|page, which has|pages, which have}} cascading protection turned on. You can change this page's protection level, but it will not affect the cascading protection.

Frustratingly, more than half of the translation strings do not have any accompanying explanations. You may have to click through Wikipedia special pages looking for an instance of the term, in order to figure out what is being talked about. Even a simple term like "block" that does not have an explanatory note becomes needlessly difficult; I used the word for "a block of text" until a later entry made it clear that the sense called for was "prevent access."

Messages that have code elements such as $1 (meaning that some text or number will be inserted in that position by the software) should especially have explanatory text, since the content of "$1" often makes a big difference in the words you use and the order you place your text and code elements. For example, "$1 logged-in users" could either render as "50 logged-in users," in which case the Swahili would be "Watumiaji $1 sasa," or "Show/hide logged-in users," in which case the Swahili should be "$1 watumiaji sasa."

The final frustration is that many of the messages - naturally, the ones you put off for last - are extremely long. One has to wonder if messages like this are crucial to establishing the core functionality of MediaWiki in any language:

Using the form below will rename a page, moving all\n
of its history to the new name.\n
The old title will become a redirect page to the new title.\n
Links to the old page title will not be changed; be sure to\n
check for double or broken redirects.\n
You are responsible for making sure that links continue to\n
point where they are supposed to go.\n
\n
Note that the page will '''not''' be moved if there is already\n
a page at the new title, unless it is empty or a redirect and has no\n
past edit history. This means that you can rename a page back to where\n
it was just renamed from if you make a mistake, and you cannot overwrite\n
an existing page.\n
\n
WARNING!\n
This can be a drastic and unexpected change for a popular page;\n
please be sure you understand the consequences of this before\n
proceeding.

The warning that should be posted is that the project will take a lot longer than you expect, and won't be nearly as straightforward as advertised.

Nonetheless, the draft Swahili translation is complete, after probably 16 hours of work. At the moment it is being reviewed in Kenya, and we will upload it as soon as we finish refining it. Meanwhile, a few observations are in order:

It really helps to have a good familiarity with computer terminology in general and Wikipedia in particular before starting to translate MediaWiki. If you don't know about "Watchlists" or "RSS Feeds," you will face challenges beyond your normal translation project.

You will benefit greatly from a working technical glossary and good dictionaries for your language. Fortunately, Swahili has had a number of successful localization projects (OpenOffice, Google, Microsoft Windows, and others), so I had a lot of resources to consult and an online Swahili dictionary that contains many IT terms and to which I could add new ones. This will not be the case for most other African or minority languages.

This project should not be done alone. Ideally you will have two people who are both knowledgeable about computers, both fluent in English and the project language, but one of whom is a native English speaker and one a native speaker of the language in question. Alternately, have someone on standby who can explain any problematic terms. I was lucky to work with Arthur Buliva, a Kenyan computer programmer, as we pitched translations back and forth over instant messenger.

A big challenge is that you cannot simply coin terms where none exist in your project language. Your users will need to understand the meanings behind the messages, usually without reference to a dictionary. If your language does not have a word for "subcategories" or "namespace" - well, welcome to the wonderful world of software localization!

I do not want to scare anyone away from trying to localize MediaWiki in their language, but I do want to paint a realistic picture of the task in front of you. It is not fast, and for most languages it is not easy, but the outcome - truly useful software in your language - will be its own reward.

The practical application of types of languages

2008-01-17T22:07:00.000Z

The types of individual languages as posted on the SIL website names five types of languages. In my opinion there are only two of these types that allow for new terminology and still be the same language, they are the living and the constructed languages. In the definition of constructed languages reconstructed languages are specifically excluded.

The problem is, what do you do with reconstructed languages. How do you qualify a project from both a linguistic and from a language standards point of view that aims to write an encyclopaedia in Ancient Greek or one in Ottoman Turkish?

From my point of view, you reconstruct such a language when you want to discuss modern concepts. The concepts of existing words has to be morphed into something new in order for the words to fit. New words have to be borrowed from other languages or invented in order to express things like computer, satellite or television.

When you have people writing new texts in historic, extinct or ancient languages they should not qualify as being in this language. Then again, if you take Latin, a language qualified as ancient, you have a language that has been continuously used in the Roman Catholic church, a language that is the national language of the Vatican with a dictionary of modern words to help understand where classical knowledge does not suffice.

The question is how do you deal with modern texts in historic, extinct or ancient languages. How should they be tagged. It is clear that these modern variations are quite distinct from the original language. When you consider "Church Latin", according to Wikipedia it is the same language as the classical language. But given the continuous usage it should not be labeled as ancient.

In the Wikimedia Foundation the answer to these questions is what the decision to approve or deny a new language for most of the project types. The one exception is Wikisource, a library of source texts with translations and other supporting material.

In conclusion:

Should Latin be marked as an ancient language
How do you label efforts in reviving a language

Thanks,
Gerard

MediaWiki language development in 2008

2008-01-12T11:30:00.001Z

MediaWiki is the software that runs Wikipedia. Within the Wikimedia Foundation it is used in many languages for many projects. Some of these projects, like the Bengali Wikipedia, are the biggest single source for a language on the Internet.

The BetaWiki project has become the hub of the MediaWiki localisation, not only is a Web interface provided, there is also support for "gettext" or ".po" files. This allows for the use of CAT Tools like OmegaT. Managing the localisation of several hundred languages is not easy and making sure that MediaWiki is properly localised is a struggle. We found that the quality of the language support is spotty. Policies in the WMF have changed requiring localisation as a precondition for a new project. Big improvements in the MediaWiki localisation have happened in the last few months.

In order to improve the MediaWiki usabilty we have received some funding from Hivos. This will make it possible to put a premium on the localisation of MediaWiki for languages not in Europe or North America.

Many of the languages that MediaWiki supports are different and we do get requests for changing the sort order. Typically we follow the CLDR but there are languages where the CLDR does not help us. It would be good if we knew how to work with the CLDR and share our work.

For American Sign Language, we have been told that for SignWriting an extension will be programmed allowing for a Wikipedia in sign languages. This we hope will stimulate the emancipation of all sign languages a lot. It will be a first to have encyclopedic content for sign languages.

NB today new Wikipedias are starting in Saterland Frisian, Crimean Tatar and Lower Sorbian. :) For many more languages preparations are being made in the Incubator. :)

Thanks,
Gerard

Facebook Status Day for African Languages

2008-01-10T19:47:00.002Z

Although the Facebook social networking site clings stubbornly to its English-only interface, it has become wildly popular with college students and twentysomethings worldwide. Among Facebook users are many thousands of African students, whether studying in Africa or at universities abroad.

An African Languages user group on Facebook is working to bring together those who speak and/or have an interest in African languages. Several group projects are anticipated, using the power of the network to enhance the recognition of African languages online and off.

The first group activity is a series of modest awareness-raising events, scheduled for the 15th of every month this year. Members will be posting their "Status" in the African language of their choice, for all their contacts to see and appreciate Africa's many tongues. The first event will occur this Tuesday - you can join the Status Day event by clicking here.

Show your Facebook status in your favorite African Language! 2008 is the International Year of Languages, and the African Languages group on Facebook is celebrating by posting our personal status messages in African languages on the 15th of every month.

Your "status" is the Facebook feature where you can post a simple message about yourself, like "Abdul is happy" or "Betty wishes you a Happy New Year." On Status Day, we'll tell the world how we are in the languages of Africa.

For example, in Swahili: "Mbiha hajambo" (Mbiha is fine), or in Akan: "Akua ho ye" (Akua is fine)

So, on January 15, please join us by saying it in an African Language!

Happy New Year

2008-01-02T12:07:00.000Z

Welcoming 2008 is welcoming the UNESCO International Year of Languages. For people like us who care about languages, it is an opportunity to have ourselves be heard by a larger audience. This opportunity will be realised by our own efforts as the UNESCO supportive material cannot be found yet on their website.

When 2008 allows us to promote our efforts for languages, it will help when we collaborate. There is too much for a single person, a single organisation to do. We will make a difference when we prod UNESCO to be successful. We will make a difference when we promote other programs like SignWriting. We will make a difference when we make sure that our own projects do well and integrate with others. But most of all, we will make a difference when our message is communicated as widely as possible; languages are important and deserve attention.

I wish that at the end of this year we will be satisfied with what we, as a group, have achieved.
Thanks,
Gerard

Extinct versus dead languages

2007-12-23T19:56:00.000Z

When you read the article about extinct language on the English language Wikipedia, it is defined as a language that does not have living native speakers. It is contrasted with a dead language, that is a language has stopped changing in grammar, vocabulary, and the complete meaning of a sentence. Living, extinct and dead languages are a range.

A language like Latin does not fit in one or the other category. Latin is, according to this definition, extinct. However, it is not a dead language as Latin has continuously been spoken in the Roman Catholic Church and consequently has evolved over the ages.

There are two ways out of this dilemma, the understanding of native, or changing the definition. One definition of native is "characteristic of or relating to people inhabiting a region from the beginning". With this definition Latin is not an extinct language as Latin has continuously been spoken in the Vatican. What makes this understanding feasible is that the word "mother tongue" is not part of the consideration. This is a departure of the understanding in the article where Latin is explicitly considered an extinct language. However, the examples of extinct languages is highly optimistic because the majority of these languages are likely to be dead languages and this makes the article less then authoritative in understanding the issue.

For me there is a practical application to this. When a language is dead, when it is no longer an evolving language, there is no longer a point to create a user interface for computer applications. There is no longer a point to create a new encyclopedia as an encyclopedia is to encompass all existing knowledge.

It would be helpful when an authoritative source would make this distinction between extinct and dead for languages with this express understanding of positioning languages on this scale from living to dead.

A practical question, is the historic Ottoman Turkish language (ota) living, dead or extinct.

Thanks,
Gerard

Code Africa: Looking for Hackers

2007-12-04T11:47:00.000Z

The Kamusi Project needs to update our computer code, in preparation for the upcoming launch of PALDO, the multilingual Pan-African Living Dictionary Online. If you have computer programming skills and would like to be involved, please contact CodeAfrica {at} kamusiproject {dot} org.

The full description of our call for coders is here: http://www.kamusiproject.org/en/CodeAfrica

Please pass this message along to anyone you think might be interested!

Blinding with science ...

2007-11-27T08:33:00.001Z

In a discussion about SignWriting it became apparent that people did not use the same definitions. One reasonable reaction was to point to a glossary of the terminology used and invoke its authority. The glossary in question has considerable authority; it is the glossary on the Unicode website. The implication for me was; shut up and first learn what you are talking about. As I do not have the paper qualifications that prove that I have spend a lot of time successfully mastering esoterica so I did just that.

To me it proved quickly that this Unicode glossary is written without any consideration of non-spoken languages. The definition for alphabet; "A writing system in which both consonants and vowels are indicated." makes it impossible for SignWriting to be an alphabet but it seems to me this is equally true for any of the alternatives given. Unicode does provide the standard for writing systems, but their definitions do not really matter as long as they use the right terminology for character, glyph and all the other concepts applicable to writing itself.

An alternate definition for alphabet has it as: "An ordered set of letters used in a language." This definition is possibly overly broad as it would fit an abugida equally well. To be fair to the Unicode literature and its glossary, it has not considered SignWriting because SignWriting is not mentioned and it is not yet included in Unicode. Then again, Unicode did recognise SignWriting as Sgnw in the ISO 15924 in 2004.

Thanks,
Gerard

UN Adopts the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

2007-11-16T14:21:00.000Z

Finally, governments have woken up to the need to protect the indigenous languages and cultures of the world!

Does this mean that, at last, the funding pots for language documentation, research and development will become available? I hope so… It has been, and continues to be, a constant battle to find funds for the protection of languages.

With over half of the 7,000+ languages of the world predicted to die out within the next 50 years perhaps this UN Resolution has come just in time.

And… with 2008 being designated as the UN Year of Languages I hope we will see some real action from governments across the world with regard to indigenous languages.

Debbie Garside

The following excerpts are taken from the UN Web Site

http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/declaration.htm
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/512/07/PDF/N0651207.pdf?OpenElement

[Excerpt]
The High Commissioner for Human Rights welcomes the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the General Assembly on 13 September 2007, as a triumph for justice and human dignity following more than two decades of negotiations between governments and indigenous peoples' representatives.

The UN Declaration was adopted by a majority of 144 states in favour, 4 votes against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) and 11 abstentions (Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Samoa and Ukraine).

The Declaration establishes a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity, well-being and rights of the world's indigenous peoples. The Declaration addresses both individual and collective rights; cultural rights and identity; rights to education, health, employment, language, and others. It outlaws discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them. It also ensures their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own priorities in economic, social and cultural development. The Declaration explicitly encourages harmonious and cooperative relations between States and indigenous peoples.
Resolution adopted by the General Assembly
[without reference to a Main Committee (A/61/L.67 and Add.1)]

61/295. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

[Excerpt]

Article 13
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.
2. States shall take effective measures to ensure that this right is protected and also to ensure that indigenous peoples can understand and be understood in political, legal and administrative proceedings, where necessary through the provision of interpretation or by other appropriate means.

Article 14
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.
2. Indigenous individuals, particularly children, have the right to all levels and forms of education of the State without discrimination.
A/RES/61/2956
3. States shall, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.

Article 15
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the dignity and diversity of their cultures, traditions, histories and aspirations which shall be appropriately reflected in education and public information.
2. States shall take effective measures, in consultation and cooperation with the indigenous peoples concerned, to combat prejudice and eliminate discrimination and to promote tolerance, understanding and good relations among indigenous peoples and all other segments of society.

Article 16
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-indigenous media without discrimination.
2. States shall take effective measures to ensure that State-owned media duly reflect indigenous cultural diversity. States, without prejudice to ensuring full freedom of expression, should encourage privately owned media to adequately reflect indigenous cultural diversity.

Localisation of MediaWiki

2007-11-16T10:11:00.000Z

MediaWiki, the software that runs, among others Wikipedia, is localised in many languages. Most new projects get their localisation as part of the software, the only thing left after an installation is to customise the system messages where neede. When a language is truly new to MediaWiki, the localisation can be done locally or centrally. When the localisation is done centrally, the messages are merged almost daily into the MediaWiki core and become available in all Wikimedia Foundation projects within a few days and every four months in a new MediaWiki release.

So far all the new localisations happened as a result of a request for new Wikipedias. Yesterday I noticed that the localisation for the Tuvin language, was driven by a project that is not within the WMF. You then ask yourself if there are localisations for languages elsewhere. I asked Angela, and she pointed me to several constructed languages hosted by Wikia. Some of them, like Aeres and Anglish are so new, that the Wikia project is likely the first real effort to realise these languages. A private use code can be used to indicate the language used until there is sufficient maturity for recognition.

There are Wikipedias in over 250 languages. The quality of the localisation of MediaWiki however is still patchy. It has improved a lot with the great work of Niklas Laxström and because no new WMF project is started without a good localisation for the language.

With so many people involved, all volunteers, it is not easy to get and maintain the desired quality. This quality is however essential as MediaWiki is a tool that supports more languages then virtually any other application and has an installed base that is growing rapidly.

Thanks,
Gerard

Kamusi Project at the WLDC

2007-11-13T16:53:00.000Z

It is with great excitement that we are able to unveil the new home of the Kamusi Project under the auspices of the World Language Documentation Centre. The Kamusi Project is back online at (drumroll please...........) www.kamusiproject.org

The Kamusi Project, also known as the Internet Living Swahili Dictionary, was born and raised at the Yale University Council on African Studies. Over time it has become one of the world's most used resources for African languages, serving over a million dictionary lookups a month to users around the world, including tens of thousands in Africa.

The WLDC will offer the Kamusi Project a home where we can thrive and grow. The project will benefit greatly from the support of an organization devoted specifically to the goals of language documentation. At the same time, the WLDC gives the project the autonomy and flexibility necessary to manage such a complex and diverse project.

I will write in the future about PALDO, the upcoming multilingual dictionary for African languages that is the next step for the Kamusi Project under the WLDC.

Though the new kamusiproject.org site is mostly functional, some places are still a bit rough, with some pages and functionality yet to be activated. We are hard at work finishing the transfer, which involves tens of thousands of pages and numerous complicated computer scripts. However, we welcome you to visit and use the resources as we finish moving in to our new home. (If you find something broken, please let me know the specifics at martin /at\ kamusiproject /dot\ org)

Finally, a mention about financing. We've made the leap to the WLDC without the benefit of any current funding, and no money in the bank. (And with enormous thanks to the Negaunee Foundation for clearing our previous debts, so that we're starting with a zero balance instead of deep in the hole.) We have a number of plans in the works to put the project on the path to sustainability, and we will soon be launching a kick-off campaign to raise funds for the project. If you wish to help, please consider yourself invited to make a donation before we start the formal campaign! Accounting and financial oversight will be provided by the WLDC as a registered non-profit organization in the UK.

I'm looking forward tremendously to developing the Kamusi Project and PALDO under the wing of the WLDC. And I'm thrilled to announce that, after a two month hiatus, the Kamusi Project is once again open for business!

Martin Benjamin
Kamusi Project Director

2nd Internet conference & Standards

2007-11-12T09:56:00.000Z

With reference to Gerard's hopes in respect of this meeting, I would add the related issue that he generally raises.
This is the extent to which there need to be good strategies in place to bring about universal implementation of the existing ISO/IEC and International Industry Standards as well as looking at the development and implementation of new requirements.
I am thinking that one leg of such strategies would include heightening awareness of suppliers and users alike of the use of declaration or certification as appropriate. I.e. suppliers implement and declare or obtain certification of conformity and users know to look for such demonstration of conformity. IMO it is the users who are the more important of the two with respect to a strategical campaign. When users start to insist on the application of standards to meet their needs - the suppliers will begin to take the issue seriously.
Reagrds to all
Chris

The second meeting on Internet governance

2007-11-08T14:03:00.000Z

The second Unesco meeting on Internet governance is held from 12 to 15 November in Rio de Janeiro. The subject matter is interesting, it brings together freedom of expression and security to open standards and linguistic diversity.

Highlighting the fact that multilingualism on the Internet is essential to ensure freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge in cyberspace, the second UNESCO organized workshop entitled "Towards International Standards for a Truly Multilingual Global Internet" aims at fostering international cooperation in establishing standards for a multilingual global Internet.

In my opinion one basic stumbling block for many languages is that they are not recognised in standard applications. People can not indicate in their user interface that they write for instance in Neapolitan. They can not indicate that their video is in American Sign Language. I hope this issues is raised as it is concrete and relatively easy to remedy. I hope that the workshop will address this issue, I hope that the papers and presentations for this workshop will become available preferably on line.

Thanks,
Gerard

Welcome to The World Language Documentation Centre

2007-11-07T10:44:00.000Z

It gives me great pleasure, as CEO of The World Language Documentation Centre, to make this first post on our official WLDC blog.

My first task is to let people know what The WLDC is all about so here it is in a nutshell...

The World Language Documentation Centre (TheWLDC or WLDC for short) was created in May of this year after many years/months of discussion with like-minded people. We have a board of some 25 members from a variety of different backgrounds - although we are all linked in some way or other to either or both the language and standardization industries.

Members are charged with formulating the aims and objectives of The WLDC and assisting, where possible, with strategy and implementation ideas. Some members are more involved than others dependent on the amount of time they have a available; which seems to change throughout the year. Most correspondence is conducted by email with meetings taking place, usually, to coincide with other events that members attend throughout the year.

We launched the WLDC at our inaugural meeting, hosted by UNESCO in Paris in May 2007, and since then we have had two further meetings and a whole host of online correspondence via the members private forums. We are very fortunate to have a dynamic Chairman in Christian Galinski of Infoterm to preside over our inaugural year .

Our aim is... "To achieve international recognition as a reliable and trusted source and facilitator of sources of metadata, data and information about the languages of the world". See http://www.thewldc.org/objectives.php for our full mission statement.

Obviously, The WLDC is in its infancy and we need to establish the role that it will play within both the Linguistic and standardization communities. It is hoped that The WLDC will become the prime mover within TC37 Standards as Databases initiatives; particularly for ISO 639. We also hope to be the focal point for linguistic documentation and research - linking to projects conducted by the multitude of related organizations and universities around the world. Our first project along these lines has been established thanks to Yale University who have most recently passed responsibility for the Kamusi Project (an online Swahili dictionary) to the WLDC. More news on this later when we relaunch the project.

On another note, members have had some discussions with regard to setting up International Research Awards within The WLDC and we are currently discussing this as well as our membership scheme. More news about this coming soon.

The WLDC is very much in its infancy and we could really do with your help and assistance. I hope you will join us once our membership scheme is up and running.

One final note, we are in the first stages of organizing what will become an annual event - The World Language Documentation Centre Conference. It is very fitting that this first conference will be held in Wales as this is where we are based administratively - albeit that our base is in Pembrokeshire in West Wales and the conference is being hosted by Bangor University in North Wales.

Hwyl fawr am nawr!

Debbie Garside