[A12n-forum] Rhodes Univ. students translate webmail into Xhosa (South Africa)

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following item from the South African online journal Tectonic was seen
on their site at http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1523 (thanks to a
Google alert)...  Don


Students translate webmail into local language
By Melissa Gardiner
17 May, 2007

isiXhosa speakers have translated the interface for Rhodes University's
Horde email system in a 48-hour Translate@thon. The translated software is
the first application of its kind that will allow the institute's students
and staff to access email in their mother tongue.

About 60 isiXhosa speakers and IT specialists huddled around computer
screens and dictionaries in an attempt to translate the 10 000 words that
make up the Rhodes email system on Friday afternoon.

The marathon event was organised by the Telkom Centre of Excellence in
Distributed Multimedia, SANTED (South African-Norway Tertiary Education
Development) and non-profit translation project Translate.org.za and aimed
to make indigenous African languages visible on the Rhodes campus.

"People assume that when you go to university, you are fully competent in
English," said SANTED co-ordinator Pamela Maseko. SANTED has been involved
in a number of projects to help Rhodes staff and students who are not
first-language English speakers. The translation of the Rhodes webmail
system forms part of the terminology development project that has been
working closely with the Rhodes Computer Science department.

Maseko says that it is vital to look at the lack of African language
translations in technology and computer programs. "Language is linked to
people's identity and to people's culture," says Maseko. She says that by
not being exposed to one's own language in writing or computer technology,
one begins to undermine a big part of one's identity.

Rhodes first year student, Gcobani Jombile says that she has been "humbled"
by the translation experience. "I have never really put that much value in
my language," she says.

Maseko described the translat@thon as the "ilima" of translation, meaning
that a group of people have come together for a common goal - to protect
African languages from the dangers of technology.

Translate.org.za director, Dwayne Bailey, said the danger of not translating
computer programs into African languages is that people start to see their
own languages as inferior to others.

Bailey said the challenge of software companies is to make computer programs
work in the culture and language of the user and to make software that is
able to be translated into different languages.

In 2004, Translate.org.za successfully translated OpenOffice.org into Zulu,
Northern Sotho and Afrikaans and by 2005 they had translated it into all 11
official languages.

Microsoft is currently working on a software tool to help computer program
be translated into six African languages, including Zulu, Afrikaans,
isiXhosa, Setswana, Swahili and Sepedi.

SANTED ICT co-ordinator, Lorenzo Dalvit, says that the Rhodes Translat@thon
is just the beginning. If the model works, they will translate the webmail
system into the other official South African languages.

Dalvit says that once the words have been translated, they will go through a
quality check to make sure that the translated words are of good quality
before they are put onto the webmail system. He says that they want the
system working as soon as possible, but that they need to make sure that it
is as good as the English system so that people will be encouraged to use
it.

Translate.org.za won the African ICT Achiever award for bridging the digital
divide in Africa in 2006.


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