Re: [A12n-Collab] "Microsoft to launch applications in three Nigerian languages"

[Martin Benjamin <martin.benjamin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One important failure in the Microsoft methodology, the way I see it, is 
 that they insist on keeping their terminology lists proprietary.  The 
logic is impeccable, and perfectly flawed.
The logic, from the corporate perspective, is: "We've spent our treasure 
to develop IT terms in a language.  The terms add value to our product. 
 If we share the terms, someone else will come and use them for their 
product, and we lose twice.  We lose once because the other company gets 
for free something that we paid good money for.  We lose a second time 
because now our product doesn't have any special added value over the 
competitors, so we cannot charge a price premium that will make the 
investment worthwhile."
The flaw in the argument is: If the terminology lists are secret, then 
users won't be able to understand the software.  If you can't understand 
the software, you can't use the software.  If you can't use the 
software, you won't buy the software.
What a firm in Microsoft's position should really be doing is sharing 
their terminology lists widely and doing everything they can to get 
other companies to issue their software in local languages.  Think of it 
from the user perspective:  "If all my software is in English except for 
a few applications from Microsoft in Yoruba, but I can't understand the 
Yoruba because many of the words are newly developed technical 
vocabulary for which I have no reference source, then I would prefer to 
just continue using my Microsoft products in English.  However, if I can 
also run everything else on my machine in Yoruba, and all my other 
software is using terms that are consistent with Microsoft products, 
then I would prefer to use Yoruba at all times."
In the experience with Swahili, the Microsoft terminology to this day 
has remained (as far as I know) behind a proprietary firewall.  A recent 
post on a Tanzanian IT list gave people complicated instructions about 
how they could use some tricks within Word to access meanings for 
particular phrases in the Swahili localization, if they had it installed 
- but a user shouldn't need to be an IT professional with secret 
knowledge in order to use a computer program in their own language. 
Microsoft made noises early on that they would release their wordlist to 
the public, but if that has happened they haven't let the public know 
about it.
I suggest they should take just the opposite approach now.  Publish the 
wordlists!  Those wordlists are the user's manuals for their software in 
each language.  If other companies take those wordlists and develop 
software based on them, be happy!  Those other companies will be 
expanding the overall interest in and market for software in those 
languages.  Microsoft will win on the strength of their core products, 
and they will see the market for those products expand because the 
availability of complete computer environments for each language will 
greatly expand the number of consumers in the market.
The language data will not make Microsoft money on the Nigerian market. 
 Creating a market that wants to take advantage of the language data is 
what will make money for Microsoft in the long term.  One would think 
that a company that is willing to invest in localizing software for 
African markets would be working from a long term perspective.  Making 
their terminology lists available for the public would be evidence of 
such forward thinking.
Martin Benjamin
http://kamusiproject.org

Andrew Cunningham wrote:
> interesting for what it doesn't say as much as what it does say.
>
> Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo only have input locales in Windows Vista
>
> Yoruba requires a version of Uniscribe and appropriate fonts to render 
> correctly, this combination currently restricts it to Windows Vista (if 
> you include need for UI font capable of rendering Yoruba.
> Microsoft currently do not ship Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba keyboard layouts.
>
> I'd assume that for a Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo LIPs for Office to be 
> useful, they'll need to roll out an ELK including support for these 
> three languages?
> Andrew