Re: Kurdish - we give it a start

[Baris Cicek <baris teamforce name tr>]

On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 12:37 +0200, Erdal Ronahi wrote:
> Hi Clytie, hi everybody,
> 
> thanks for the warm words. To translate software into Kurdish is a great 
> challenge indeed. Although close to 40 Million people speak Kurdish, it 
> could not develop well, because it has been forbidden in Turkey, where 
> most Kurds live. Still it is not been taught at any state school - let 
> alone university. So we have to create a wholly "new" computer 
> terminology, which makes this task very difficult.

I'm not aiming to start a political discussion in here, but just want to
fix a misinformation. This is to say 'Kurdish' is not forbidden in
Turkey. It's just Turkey only let broadcasting and education in Turkish,
in past. That's not special to 'Kurdish' or any other language. After
language revolution of Turkey in 1938 people forced to use only Turkish
with new form. Of course that was obsolate in new century where everyone
is talking/using modern Turkish. During EU process Turkish Gov. let any
minority to use its language in education and broadcasting with
government permission. And that's the case in any other EU country
(maybe even with broader rights). Though using Kurdish computer
programmes were never forbidden in Turkey. Thus blaming Turkey for poor
Kurdish support is kind of vague.


> 
> The other difficulties are, as you said, economical underdevelopment and 
> little computer access. I am happy that the international free software 
> community - and especially the GNOME supports all kinds of localization 
> efforts. Because other players in the software market don't.

I personally support every attemt to localize software for local
market/usage. Kurdish is no exception. You can get support from our
mailing list gnome-turk gnome org  And for sending Kurdish translations
untill your cvs account will be ready, you can send your files to me and
I can commit them to CVS. 

> 
> Greetings,
> Erdal
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-i18n mailing list
> gnome-i18n gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
>