[PAL-en] FW: IDRC l10n project ideas

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[This is a reply that I sent earlier today. Ask me if you need a copy of the
document I mention.  .Don]


Hi Dwayne, Adel, all,

This is an important evolution for localization and multilingual ICT in
Africa, as well as being a positive step by IDRC towards moving the process
of developing projects and a network of localizers.

I've been tied up with several deadlines so please pardon the delay in
responding. The table of project ideas is extremely useful, but also huge
(not a criticism, just an observation). I ended up printing it out on nine
pages, trimming them and taping them together to get a better sense of the
whole.

Attached is a version of Dwayne's table with an added column with my
comments on the specific items.

General comments:

1) Several items are already the focus of the PanAfriL10n wiki (Dwayne noted
some of those). It would seem cost effective to build on the wiki as a
multifaceted localization resource that is useful to several audiences
(localizers, policymakers, ICT4D&E projects, etc.). At the upcoming workshop
for the PAL project we can discuss how best to proceed with this
(regretfully, not all of you can be invited, but we will also bring in some
new people).

2) It may be useful to diagram out the projects and their relationhips. In
fact, as I read the PALDO and .Voix.et.Textes proposals, it occurred to me
that a much richer use of diagrams would really help to understand the
projects, and in turn would also facilitate new understandings.

3) A minor point relating to the locales item: I hope that locales and
localized software for the ELWCs* don't take up a disproportionate amount of
attention of this project (these projects). This is not to say that these
aren't important - and indeed as part of a package with African language
software, for example, they can be quite useful. However, they are pretty
much guaranteed to be taken up by someone, sometime, and completed without
much effort. Where the funding is really needed now, is for less-resourced
languages - which means just about all African languages, and even Arabic
(which although it has a lot of resources going for it, still needs work in
some areas).

All the best, and as they say in Bamanankan, Aw ni ce!

.Don




* ELWC = "European / Europhone .Languages.of.Wider.Communication" - some
call them colonial, reflecting their origin; in most countries one or
another of these tongues is the official languages, or one of the official
languages. ELWC was originally coined in the 1990s by an African linguist
(Eyamba G. Bokamba at U. Illinois)