Re: Kurdish - we give it a start

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

MerrÄeba Erdal :)  (Hi)

(I hope that's right: similar to Marhaba in Arabic?)

It was interesting looking at Kurdish language resources online: as  
with my language, they are sparse and it isn't easy to find exactly  
what you want. However, there is evidently a lot of volunteer effort  
going into providing language resources, and that's always a heart- 
warming thing to see. :)

On 30/08/2005, at 8:07 PM, Erdal Ronahi wrote:

> 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 think we all have that problem to some degree, but some of us more  
than others. The computing vocabulary has developed so fast, and  
changes so quickly and continually, that it's very hard for any  
language's base to handle it, especially with the amount of  
specialized experience necessary to understand most of it. Most of  
the people in rural Vietnam wouldn't have seen a calculator, let  
alone a computer. There's a big conceptual gap to bridge. Access, I  
think, will be the crucial empowering factor, and we need to be there  
with the translations and information when people do achieve access.

It really is great to see people in your community trying computing  
for the first time, and their delight and often disbelief that  
someone has put in the effort to provide translations or information  
pages online in their language. :)
> 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 wouldn't know about that, although I've found all the projects I  
work in to be very culturally inclusive. Gnome does, I think, have  
the greatest variety in languages, and that's a remarkable  
achievement. However, the Translation Project, Pootle, Debian and  
KDE, not to mention all the projects for individual programs, are  
always keen to have and support as many languages as possible, at  
least in my experience. Watch out, Erdal, or I'll send a whole lot of  
different people to you, asking for Kurdish translations! :D

Good luck with everything. I'll be very interested to see your posts  
here, on some of the language issues in translating into Kurdish. :)

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhÃm  
Viát hÃa phán mám tá do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN