Regional Translation - Africa

Numbers in these notes need review!

Where have people been? Tunesia, Egypt (is that Africa), ZA, Senegal

Issues people expect in Africa?

Connectivity
Infrastructure, cell vs internet
Wikipedia not yet going, af, Swahili second, though only 2-3
value of localization, prioritize with real life economics
traditional view of Africa is changing, cables are going in, though still very poorly connected
cell phone localization, cell phone penetration is high. Rural area in ZA, interviewed 1000, 2 computers, 2% fixed line, 78% cell phone
localizing cell phones empowers the new uses
lots of phones, but still expensive in terms of air time and text messages
outsourcing via cell phones via free airtime (USSD)

Technical issues:

fonts and encodings, can you write the language in the first place
in West Africa in particular, fonts are rare
no complex text really, though, but some RTL issues
some code points in unicode for some characters in Unicode
politics of localization, there is interest, status of multilingual people. People are interested and value localization, but don't actually do it
localization "fragmenting" countries as it emphasizes regional languages
unfair devide between translators in Africa and l10n company in Europe
if it's not a word document, it's magic for localizers and they're already the most tech-savvy folks out there
UI space considerations, 1.5 longer in EU languages, but African languages much longer still. Need bigger cell phones :-)
Why no African wikipedias?
- Afrikaans community well connected
- Swahili mostly by people not in Africa?

Skills in Africa exported out of Africa
Culture of diaspora, academics just live everywhere in the world and just occasionally visit their origin country

Africa-wide project by translate.org.za
- Where does language sit?
- Language policies, ICT policies
Who do you take to "localization should be part of government policy"

Minimal interoperable .... . How do the 26 departments interoperate? How to specify the requirements technically?
ANLOG, among others specify which characters are needed for African languages
Downloadable fonts on the web help, 10 fonts available, might help wikipedia
Unicode needs fonts to take code points
Most african scripts are latin-based
Motivation can be surprising
- target audience can be small
- pride in language
- catalyze by starting localization with software that people use and see, like Firefox
access to localization tools? Online webtool time vs download time for offline tools
How much localization can you buy, for how much?
- Not enough work out there to make a living
- Significantly higher cost, even though cost of living is much lower
- Yearly salary? 12-15k euros a year for about 1000 word a day, 20k words a month, Firefox almost over a month
- Not really a responsibility of software projects, but possibly of local governments
- Government funding exists in other regions
UNESCO playing any role?
Mobile devices get non-text UI due to small screen estate, is that going to be differently localized?
Cultural issues like "wizard" not having a positive connotation in all cultures
Netbooks might a different format