A Chave

The Granary's Key: Localisation Methodology and Importance Miguel Branco

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Localisation, a world view M.

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Propietary Localisation - Language Families 25

L o calisat ion is not cheap... so proprietary software chooses very well languages that is to support. Major software companies, those who hold the biggest portions of the desktop market share, chooses a limited amount of languages, mostly of European or igin.

20

Windows Vista Mac OS X 15

Propietary Platforms - Language by Continent 10 25

5

20

15

0 Altaic Afro-Asiatic

Korean Indo-European

Japonic

Sino-Tibetan Uralic Thai-Kadai 10

Indo-European languages have conquer the world... only after their original speakers had done so. Say the Spanish Empire (XVI-XVII) , the Portuguese Empire (XV-XX), the First and Second French Empire (XVIII) and the British Empire (XVII-XX).

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5

0 European

Asian

African

Propietary Platforms - Indo-European Subfamilies 7

Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages are the main target inside the big language family that Indo-European is.

6

5

Windows Vista Mac OS X

4

3

Propietary Platforms - Languages and Country Development According to CIA's developed country list

2

25

1

20

0 Balto-Slavic

Germanic

Greek

Italic

Slavic

Windows Vista Mac OS X

15

Obviously when a company starts to localise its products to some locale they have already decided it's going to be a profit able move, at least in the midterm... if not it's an absurd move. This is to say they target developed countries. W hen they t arget undevelope d count r ies... well, their not so undevelope d, their 'things' like Russia and East European Countries. M.

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10

5

0 Developed

Undeveloped

Propietary Platforms - Languages by Extinction Danger UNESCO's Red Book of Endangered Languages Classification 35

30

25

Windows Vista Mac OS X

20

15

Very rarely we will see endangered languages being lo calise d. When that's the case we can be sure that that language has an official status.

10

5

0 Not Endangered

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Potentially Endangered

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Let's be fair; pr ivate soft wa re companies do it well. They target some specific market and they reach it. Indeed they are cover ing bet ween 40% to 60% of world's populat ion in their native language.

But, free software is just about money but freedom... freedom to localise, too.

Users Covered in its Native Language In millions of Speakers 6000

Hey, stop. Free soft wa re is alre ady doing so... and it may get even further! While proprietary software targets 15 (Mac OS X Leopard) to 35 (Windows Vista) languages, KDE, GNOME surpass the number of 50.

Real Potential

5000

4000

3000

2000

'Real' means good localisations already released (KDE 4.1, GNOME 2.24 and XFCE X.X). It has been imposed that KDE localization must have kde-base at 100% and 70% User Interface translated to be considered a work done. For GNOME, as there's no such thing as gnomebase, a somewhat bigger threshold has been imposed, user interface at 80%. No data for full XFCE localisation has been gathered. M.

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1000

0 Window s Vista

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Mac OS X

KDE

GNOME

XFCE

Full Platform Localisations - Showdown

Uralic

Though the job done in free software is mainly for Indo-European languages, a more diverse s et of languages, from a more diverse collection of linguistic families and geographically dispers ed, get thing done as well.

Tai-Kadai South-Caucasian Sino-Tibetan Niger-Congo

Full Indoeuropean and Uralic Localisations

Isolates Indo-European

Uralic*

Dravidian

Slavic

Constructed

Italic

Austro-Asiatic

Indo-Iranian

Austronesian

Greek

Altaic Germanic Afro-Asiatic Windows Vista Mac OS X GNOME 2.4 KDE 4.1

Celtic 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35 Balto-Slavic Albanian

Inside the Indo-European family, free software surpasses private software in terms of covering more languages of more subfamilies. M.

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Windows Vista Mac OS X GNOME 2.4 KDE 4.1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Oh, again, geographically more disperse... why is America and Oceania so forgotten?... ( be awake if you wanna know the answer!! )

Localisations by Continent Localised Languages' Continent of Origin Windows Vista Mac OS X GNOME 2.4 KDE 4.1

30

25

Localisations by Influence Area Social Development CIA's Clasification, Extrict

30 20

Windows Vista Mac OS X GNOME 2.4 KDE 4.1

25 15 20 10 15 5 10 0 European

Asian

African 5

0

And, over again, shines by comparison

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Developed

Undeveloped

Languages Fully Localised by Dissapereance Risk UNESCO's 'Red Book of Endangered Languages' Classification

Extinct

Nearly Extinct

Windows Vista Mac OS X GNOME 2.4 KDE 4.1

Seriously Endangered

Endangered

Potentially Endangered

Not Endangered

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

This may seem obvious by now... but pr ivate soft ware is NOT interested in languages that may per ish... or have already pass ed away!. ...Unless they may be planning a Latin edition of Seven or Snow Leopard for the Holy See, that won't make their money!. M.

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Web Browers 40 35 30 25

FF3 Camino Opera IE7

20 15 10 5 0 Altaic Afro-Asiatic

Dravidian Isolate Austronesian Indo-European

Japonic

Sino-Tibetan Thai-Kadai South-Caucasican

Uralic

9 30

8 7

25

6 5

FF3 Camino Opera IE7

4 3 2

20

FF3 Camino Opera IE7

15

10

1 5

0 Balto-Slavic Germanic Indo-Iranian Albanian Celtic Greek Italic

Slavic Uralic

0 African American

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Asian

European Oceaniac

50

35

45 30

40 35

25

FF3 Camino Opera IE7

30 25 20

FF3 Camino Opera IE7

20 15

15 10

10 5

5

0 Potentially Endangered Seriously Endangered Not Endangered Endangered Extinct

Population

0 Developed

Undeveloped

60

5000

50

4500 4000

40

3500 3000

Languages

30

2500 2000

20

1500 1000

10

500 0 FF3

Camino

Opera

IE7

0 FF3

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Camino

Opera

IE7

Office Suites 50

70 Office 2007 Ooo 3

45

Office 2007 Ooo 3

60

40 35

50

30 25

40

20 30

15 10

20

5 0

10

Altaic Austronesian Indo-European Japonic Sino-Tibetan Uralic Afro-Asiatic Austro-Asiatic Dravidian Isolete Niger-Congo Tai-Kadai

0 Not Endangered

40

4500 30

Potentialy Endangered

Seriously Endangered

80

5000

35

Endangered

70

4000 60

3500

25

50

3000

Office 2007 Ooo 3

20 15

2500

Population

Languages

30

1500 1000

10

40

2000

20

500 5

10

0 Office 2007

Ooo 3

0 Office 2007 Ooo 3

0 Af

As

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And this was what it is already done.. right now.

from here on? What to expect

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Languages Being Localised by Family 70

60

50

40

KDE GNOME XFCE

30

20

10

0 Altaic Afro-Asiatic

Austronesian Dravidian Isolate Austro-Asiatic Constructed Indo-European

Japonic

Niger-Congo South Caucasic Tupian Sino-Tibetan Tai-Kadai

Uralic

Recently a more diverse set of languages, from different world regions, have registered teams in the major desktop environments and other projects as well. Hot spot s: India, Himalaya s and Cent ral A sia, Malay A rchipelago (Bor neo, Java, Sumat ra, Philippines..), and Souther n Af r ica. M.

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Indo-European Languages Being Localised by Subfamily

German and Slavic Languages does it very well already. Italic languages, though spoken in some of the world most developed countries does it poorly by comparison.

16

14

12

10 KDE GNOME XFCE

8

6

4

2

0 Albanian Armenian

Baltic

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Greek Indo-Iranian

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Slavic

Indo-Iranian languages are poised to be more relevant inside the In-Eu family thanks to the Indian and Mideast languages.

Languages Covered in Each Indo-European Subfamily

Language Covered in Each Language Family

In Percentage Points

In Percentage Points

Uralic

Slavic

Tupian Italic

Tai-Kadai Kartvelian

Indo-Iranian

Sino-Tibetan Niger-Congo Japonic

GNOME Greek KDE XFCE

Isolate

Germanic

GNOME KDE XFCE

Indo-European Celtic

Dravidian Constructed

Baltic

Austronesian Armenian

Austro-Asiatic Altaic

Albanian

Afro-Asiatic 0

0,1

0,2

0,3

0,4

0,5

0,6

0,7

0

0,1

0,2

0,3

Though, there's still a long shot to go, even for European languages M.

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0,4

0,5

0,6

0,7

0,8

0,9

1

Speaker's Region Social Development CIA's strict Classification, Only considering Language's Origin Region 80

Long things, short:

70 60

Ever y t ime, more 'big' languages f rom developing count r ies ●

Developed Undeveloped

50

A nd more small, endangered languages f rom Europe an count r ies.

40

●

30 20 10 0 KDE

GNOME

XFCE

Languages Being Localised by Risk of Dissapereance UNESCO's Red Book of Endangered Languages Classification 90 80 70 KDE GNOME XFCE

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Potentially Endangered Seriously Endangered Not Endangered Endangered Nearly Extinct

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Extinct

Internet penetration seems to be a key factor for volunteers to get involved and localised their own languages. Minority languages are always spoken outside the big cities or most developed regions, where internet access comes first Two clear phenomena: Europ e: all major or official languages are localised, minor it y's or endangered languages start to make inroads into localisations. From now on we can only expect to see this profile expanded by adding small, non official and endangered languages. ●

A frican and A sian Undevelop e d countries: official languages, usually with huge amount of speakers, are being registered to localise. No minority's or endangered languages... yet. ●

And a fact: The small number of speakers together with the enormous pressure of the official language inhibits American's and Australian-Pacific languages to get involved in localisation. Lack of internet access may be playing a role or free-software reduced penetration. ●

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Population Range

Living Languages Number of Speakers Count

Percent

Cumulative

Count

Percent

Cumulative

100,000,000 to 999,999,999

8

0,10

0.1%

2,301,423,372

40.20753

40.20753%

10,000,000 to 99,999,999

75

1,10

1.2%

2,246,597,929

39.24969

79.45723%

1,000,000 to 9,999,999

264

3,80

5.0%

825,681,046

14.42525

93.88247%

100,000 to 999,999 892

12,90

17.9%

283,651,418

4.95560

98.83807%

10,000 to 99,999

1,78

25,70

43.7%

58,442,338

1.02103

99.85910%

1,000 to 9,999

1,97

28,50

72.1%

7,594,224

0.13268

99.99177%

100 to 999

1,07

15,50

87.6%

457,02

0.00798

99.99976%

10 to 99

344

5,00

92.6%

13,16

0.00023

99.99999%

1 to 9

204

3,00

95.5%

698

0.00001

100.00000%

Unknown

308

4,50

100.0%

Speakers of the top 264 languages, which is only the 5% of today's world's living languages, are the 94% of world's population! In the next 5-10 year we may get to that

264 golden number! M.

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Oceanía Hawaiian Sudanese Cebuano Madurese Ilokano Hiligaynon Minangkabau Banjar Balinese Tetum Tahitian Fijian Samoan Tongan Gilbertese Maori

America Navajo Quechua Aymara Guaraní K'iche' Antillean Creole Cree Languages Cherokee Ojibwa-Potawatomi-Ottawa M.

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Europe

So, what about Peninsular languages? ●

Castilian [es] (322-400 mill; Official)

●

Caló [rmr] (0,04 mill; Unrecognised)

●

Basque [eu] (0,6-1 mill; Co-Official)

●

Cat alan [ca] (9 mill; Co-Official)

●

Occit án A ranés (Gascon variety) [gsc] (0.005 mill; Co-Official)

●

A ragonés (0.01 mill; Unofficial)

●

Ext remaduran (0.2-0.5 mill; Unofficial)

●

Atur-L eones (Diasystem)

●

●

Astur ian [ast] (0.1-0.5 mill; Recognised)

●

Leonés [roa] (extinct, revival movement)

●

Mirandés [mwl] ](0,015 mill; Official)

Galician-Por tuguese (Diasystem) ●

Por tuguese [pt] (10 mill, Official)

●

Galician [gl ](3-4 mill; Co-Official) –

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Fala [fax] (0,001 mill; Unrecognised)

Note: About statistics: I have gathered all information and produced all this statistics myself. So, they are NOT error free. In you find something 'strange' please check it and have me informed about it. About population statistics: there's no accurate world population census neither language census, obviously, so they may have great error associated! About language by origin. I have considered language by origin and NOT by biggest speakers population region (take Portuguese as example, I've considered it 'European' though it's more speakers in America) Language are classified differently by some author so I've followed Ethnologue's classification. I have not any intentions to offend any of the trademarks mentioned but to highlight possible differences when compare to free software. Again, in case inaccurate data had been reported by me have me informed and I'll rectify statistics if necessary

References: KDE Localisation www.l10n.kde.org GNOME Localisation www.l10n.gnome.org XFCE Localization www.i18n.xfce.org OpenOffice Localization www.l10n.openoffice.org Firefox Localization http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/l10n/ Mac OS X www.apple.com Windows Techbase http://technet.microsoft.com Ethnologue http://www.ethnologue.com/ UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/archive/RedBook/index.html Central Intelligence Agency, USA www.cia.gov

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Galician's demographic and social history M.

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Galician galego

Indo-European Italic Romance It alo-Wester n Wester n Gallo-Iber ian Ib ero-Romance West-Iber ian Por tuguese-Galician Galician 3-4 mill. Speakers. Galiza, Eo-Navia (Asturias), Bierzo (Leon), As Portelas (Zamora), and Val do Rio Elas (Extremadura) Co-Official in the Galician Autonomous Community, Kingdom of Spain Potentially endangered

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Before Rome and Latin Galician populations, are on the European e dge of genet ical var iat ion. Cul-de-sac population (Salas, Carracedo et. al., 1998). It's hypothesised that his main background is composed of the descendants of the first waves of migrations occurring 5000035000 years ago (no Neolithic's migrations) and that it has remained substantially stable and homogenised since then. Prior to Rome, mainly HallSt at t cult ure t r ibes

Different linguistic substrates from that time have had an impact in modern language through influence on Latin: from unidentified pre-indoeuropean languages, para-celt, celtic languages to proto-basque. They could have had a relevant impact shaping NW Latin Those pre-Latin substrates have an actual relevance in today's language, while influence on other romance language varies greatly Castro de Elviña (A Coruña). Virtual Reconstruction M.

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'Povos Pré-romanos da Península Ibérica', Esboço de carta etnológica a finais da 2º Guerra Púnica, circa 220 B.C.. Luis Fraga da Silva. Associaçao Campo Arqueológico de Tavira, Portugal.

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II Punic War. Roma invades Hispania. Northwest difficult orography, different cultural background reflected in different war tactics and different territory uses (indigenous fortified populations) joined to the initial lack of interest made the invasion both hard and prolonged. Not until 19 B.C. conquer NW Iberia. Finally they territory

easily

'pacified'

Romanization

the

Hispania conquest by the Roman Empire

3º Provincial Division of Hispania M.

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Roman establishes two provinces. For long time Roma maintained the imperial status to the northern provinces for long time. Tr a s n o

Foundation of Lucus, Bracara and Asturica Roma creates villages and move people from 'castros' there Latin grows as a language for high society but old style of living and language may have survived for long. Even after Roman Empire fallen some population inhabits the last 'castros', which very probably means that the newborn Iberian dialects may have coexisted with pre-Latin languages. Some document relates how a Roman woman, in charge of a mine, worries to speak to her slaves in their language (something that the author sees as shocking) . Latin became the language of prestige and possibly a common language for 'indigenous' people of different linguistic backgrounds (lingua franca). Establishment of a feudal society

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The golden age of the new Romance Western Roman Empi re fal l s (395-476) Roma nce lan g ua ges sta rt to develo p all across the extension of the old empire Suevian Kingdom is stablish in the NW Arabs invade the peninsula (711 A.C.), constraining Christian kingdoms to the upper north. A reconquest, lasting centuries, starts.

Latin varieties start to shape into separate languages from the 6th century onwards. Hispanic romance languages advance to the sout h with the reconquest. M.

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The Latin variety originated on the Suevian Kingdom expands to the south. By the 12th century can be called a language for whom there's a clear conscience of being different from the nearby romance languages. That language is the origin of modern Galician and Portuguese so it's referred to as Galician-Por t ugues e (Galego-Por tugués) Though classified as separate languages, being perceived as such by modern speakers, both languages have being classified sometimes as dialects. More accurately they can be said to form a dia system.

X-XIII c. Galician-Portuguese is perceived as useful for the nobility and church so it develops a written tradition. It's t he language of nobilit y and Church a s well as people's language. It became a language of literacy prestige all across Europe. Said to be splendidly 'suitable for composing poetry' due to its 'sonority'. It's Galician Golden Age.

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The dark ages: A palace melodrama Kingdom of Galician gets tied to the castilian Kingdoms, while County of Portugal gains independence, expands south Hous e of Trast amara, of Galician Origin, reigns over Castillian Kingdom. Ferdinan III the Saint (XIII c)., Henry II of Trastamara (XIV c.): progressive substitution of galician born nobility: 'nobility occupa tion' Elisabeth I of Cast ile wins the civil war and reigns with supremacy: 'dome and cast rat ion of Galicia' Galician nobles are substituted by castilian nobles and Bourgeoisie. By the first time, administration is Castilian speaker, 'medium' to 'low' classes still speak Galician. Church follows the move, dictated by the crown. (though Galician aristocracy will still write private letter in Galician and so on until very late) House of Bourbons (from Philip V onwards): centralised state, first conception of the modern Spain State. From the fac to to de iure Explicit prohibition of regional languages and imposition of Castilian. Wishes of cultural homogenization. 'Spanish Royal Academy', 1713: standard castilian. 'Re al Cedula de A ranjuez', 1768.   M.

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300 years without written literature!!! M.

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The Renaissance and the Nationalist Movement The arrival of the Bourbon dynasty had a side effect on the language, the penetration of the humanist philosophy. XVII century: 'Ilustración galega': Feijoo, Sarmiento, Somoza... Galician literature flourish after 300 years of non-existence: they had to 'reinvent' the or thography, and they did it the way they new: castilian orthography The medival literature was unknown. By the XIX century Castilian had done nothing else but penetrate on the highest statements of population and expand insignificantly onto a small population on cities and villages. By the end of the XVIII only a 5% of the population may have spoken castilian

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To the city or abroad When the XIX c. started the cities were expanding like never before and people, in search of prosperity or escaping starving, moved there. This, or get a ship to the Americas. From 1900 to 1930 one third of Galicia's population migrated, this is half a million people!. Today, Spanish are called 'gallegos' in Argentina because most of the Spanish immigration were primarily of Galician origin. Buenos Aires is the 'fifth Galician province'. Buenos Aires, Argentina

Is now, from the X VIII c. onwa rds, when the adop tion of Cas tilian really s ta r ts. Castilian had gained traction as a prestige language, while Galician, was denoted as a 'rural thing'.

A Coruña Council, María Pita Square M.

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Cities drive the 'castilianization' of populations as they had been the primary residence for all those high statements of society that had had it as it main language. For example, A Coruña had a 20% of administration directly appointed by state, usually not galicians, and that moved to serve there. Tr a s n o

… And then, the Long Night of Stone

With the entrance of the XIX c. the renaissance movement crystallised in the formation of the Galician Nationalism. But the country dig deep and fight a civil war. All the previous political progress was destroyed with a Galician, Franco, ruling the country. He prohibited speaking and learning of 'regional' languages. During the civil war, law was passed by Republican recognizing Galician language. <>

But Franco finally won. Then, the long night of stone. 40 years of dictatorship Galician culture and languages are cultivated abroad, in the emigration but never openly at home. M.

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Transition Well, he wasn't going to live forever!! Dictatorship silently implodes after Franco's death as it literally committed suicide. Franco's appointed successor, Juan Carlos I, decides not to rule supreme and Chambers pass legislation to celebrate elections. It was the end of the long repressive period and the start of a new democratic period.

In the political elaboration of the 1978 Spanish Constitution different key figures participate, some dictatorship insiders committed to democracy some outsiders, some Spanish imperialists and some peripheral nationalists, some conservatives some communists, and forge a deal to stablish a multi-partisan and pluri-national state. Three 'historical nations' are constitutionally declared: Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia. Constitution stablish f ree dom to spea k language at will and not to be repress ed for doing so and permits, aside of Spanish, the declaration of 'regional' languages. M.

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Restoration

1833, Juan de Burgos introduced the provincial system, which meant that the Xunta of the Kingdom of Galician was abolished. The process of devolution initiated by the passing of the Spanish Constitution in 1978 allowed for the establishment of a new Xunta, in March 16, 1978. The Galician St at ute of Autonomy (1981), came to ratify the Xunta and Galicia's selfgovernment. 1981 statute establishes Galician as co-official, rules administration to use it, which includes government run media, and introduce the language at schools. Galician becomes language of administration by first time since the mediaeval age.  

 

Galician Presidency and Santiago de Compostela Council (Praza do Obradoiro, Santiago) M.

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But, while language gains prestige and administrative and political oratory use, in less than 30 years, population has shifted drastically to Spanish. In fact, this is a reversing process. Language danger of disappearance is clear when data on use by context and, most importantly, first language parents use with kids in their first years is checked. Galician is on the verge of being a language in potential dangered to become and endangered one.

If there's no poi nt of i n f lection, Galician faces a s u re exti nction M.

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Galician Standard: an unfinished work It's not until the very late in XX c., after the Xunta is restored, that language institutions start to elaborate a 'corpora' and then a language standard. Even when the 'Re al Academia Galega' was formed early in 1906 it never assumed an active role in this sense. At that time, a a para-university organization, the Semina r io de Est udos Galegos, , was the only to write down some kind of formal orthographic set of rules, though that rules never intended to be nothing else than an institutional tool and, outside the institution, never gained popular traction. One key factor on the galician society of the period shaping the standardizing process is the fact that Spanish is at the time a dominant and a close language who has already been standardized. Spanish grammar rules and orthographic conventions swells in the mindset of Galicians, something of which linguists can't scape neither missed. Galician dialectal variants, though primarily lexical, force to pass through a dialectal, inter-dialectal and a supra-dialectal state to definitely choose one dialectal solution over another. M.

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Through out 'dark ages' and XVIII c, when writing, used the language they had kept talking, a 'wild' form of the language. The elaboration literary history of Galician starts again in the XVIIIc.: without having ever known a written legacy it could be base upon, ●without having a unifying centre of influence, ●without having any connection to the Portuguese, ●with Spanish considered a superior language of which Galician is no more than a deprecated variant, ●

So, in this context, now we can easily understand that first literary works in Galician had a main dialectal and popular imprint. Padre Martin Sarmiento, XVIII c. reflect the challenged facing at the time, and that he identified as two: having to find graphical resources to accurately write the language and the lack of a legacy to copy and follow Two approaches emerge: the 'populist', considering that the 'true Galician resides in the variation found on speakers and that should be preserved, and the 'cultist', that pretended to imposed a set of rules.

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Rosalia de Castro, Cantares Gallegos (1863): “(escribín) sen gramática nin regras de ninghun-ha clás” The need of a written set of rules was a fundamental reason behind the latter foundation of the Real Academia Galega Though the mediaeval texts are starting to be discovered late in the XIX c. they are only known to a small elite. Anyway, they would not have served completely for the purpose needed at the time as mediaeval language phonological system was more complex and orthographic convections were, obviously, not updated to reflect changes. Mediaevalism was a position follow by very few, notably Antonio López Ferreiro. Portuguese was not being considered by the time, only theoretically. XX c. Though the RAG proclaimed “the galician language is spoken by and understood by three million galicians, eighteen in Portugal and his domains, and twelve in Brazil”, is not until the generation Ir mandades da Fala and Xeracion Nós (1916, 1936) that this concept is not going to have an impact on the written system. Inevitably Spanish still has a strong impact on it, sometimes surprisingly deliberately. Two position, when grapheme are considered, etymologist and non etymologist

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If Rosalía or Eduardo Pondal had chosen to write as they spoke, introducing lots of times words loaned from Castilian, others like Manuel Pintos tried to 'purify' and differentiate Galician from Castilian. The new generations, Irmandades da Fala e Nós, would follow that latter position and try to be strict when using loaned words. They'll pursue through research a pure language free of influence. Now old Galician, literary Portuguese and other cult language would be exploited in search of correction though many times they fail, because of introducing distortions to Galician words in order to differentiate them from Spanish other because of being unable to identified loaned words.

Adourar ambente brilo estrano lumiosos montana orgaizar penínsua voutade coor door leenda moimentos conquerir até nervosas tolice embora anceio analizazón atrevición honesturas maldizoso tenrenzas tranquileza doitro multidume forteza imitanza inesquecentes coñecencia ... M.

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Curazón delor língoa mamoria múseca númaro políteco somellanza ausurdo ideia conceución direución a -iauga efeito eisistenza seita alunos coluna costante espresión esamen ocidente oservación craro fror probrema drento esquirto presoas inoranza nazón situazón comunicazón . .

From now on Portuguese is a language to look for new words when needed. Villar Ponte (1915) says “ Galician considers Portuguese as a nationalised and modern Galician” Though big efforts are made to purify the language little was done in terms of orthographic convections. Castilian still was a language of reference, but not Portuguese. Strong interdialectalism. No consensus is reached on how to solve dialectal variation regarding plurals, verb's conjugation... No consensus is reach in terms of orthography (x,g, and j representing the same sound...) too. Only they agree to stick to phonetics. Tr a s n o

Castelao's Sempre en Galiza, 1944, Buenos Aires, is the start of a new tendency for the standard language. In 1950, with 25 years ahead of dictatorship, the publishing corporation Galaxia is founded. It would influence the standard of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Galaxia's policies were not to break too much from previous norms but progressively fixate and correct. 'Hipergaleguismos' and false derivations are very rare now. Is the start of authors conceding to solutions not used on their respective dialectal region. RAG'S 1971 Nor ms and 1971 Int it uto da Lingua Galega 'Gallego 1' are coincident. No more than a reflection of the standard elaborated by successive authors by then 1976-1977, RAG and ILG jointly write 'Ba ses prá unificación das nor mas lingüíst icas do galego' M.

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1973, Portuguese philologist Manuel Rodrigues Lapa argues that Galician cult and literay language ought to be Portuguese itself. This concept spreads soon. Ramón Piñeiro, 1973, agrees. Though 1977 RAG and ILG mentioned that and effort had been done to included the 'Portuguese tendency', now those aspiring to merge Galician into Portuguese found the norms insufficient.

In the 80's Galician language becomes official so the need for a standard is every time more important. 1979, Montero Santalla proposes a process of aproximation to Portuguese in successive and progressive steps, mostly orthographic and less phonetic. 1980, Consellería de Educacióin e Cultura, proposes a text merging the two main positions, highly based on 1977's Bases. It's called 'Normas ortográficas do idioma galego' and it's intended for internal use. 1982, RAG and ILG release 'Normas orotográficas e mor folóxicas do idioma galego'. Xunta declared them the official standard.

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Ricardo Carvalho Calero (-1990) is considered to be the father of reintegracionism. This philological posture consider Galician as a dialect of Portuguese. Portuguese would be the name given to Galician and Portuguese collectively. 80's. Among those who thought that Galician was a dialect of Portuguese, some pretended to adopt the Portuguese norm already while others preferred to first follow a closer but not identical norm. Among the latter was the Associaçóm Galega da Língua (AGAL), founded in 1980. AGAL writes 'Estudo crítico das Normas ortográficas e morfolóxicas do idioma galego' in 1983, revised in 1989. Another authors choose some kind of middle position. That tendency would be called norms 'of peace', though they were much closer to RAG's rather reintegracionism. The Asociación Socio-Pedagóxica Galega's 'Orientacións para a escrita do noso idioma', 1980, is the best example of this tendency. Important is the fact that this tendency was followed by most of political nationalists parties and by all the relevant ones.

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1995, ILG proposes RAG to slightly modify the norms and RAG ratifies such propositions. Galician Parliament is informed, thought is not necessary as Galician Law permits RAG to dictate changes in Norm without direct permission of Parliament and directly becoming official. In 2001 Galician experts of all the three Galician Universities, USC, UDC and UDV, and ILG tried to reach consensus among the three factions stablish: officialism, represented by ILG and RAG, reintegrationism, like AGAL, and minumun reintegrationism, represented by Asociación Socio-Pedagóxica. They get a text done and presented it to RAG but this rejects it. In 2002 RAG internally reopens the debate and by the 2003 they passed a proposition not entirely like the 2001 one but close. In practice this means that officialims and reintegrationism follow the same set of rules. Full reintegrationism and lusists do not abide to the new rules.

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Officialism if widelly accepted as the standard as it's been taught in schools, spoken in television and radio and so on. Lusist and reintegrations approaches have never gained a wide acceptance but only of cult or political minorities.

Approaches to language and t he st anda rd conf lic t:

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Galician is a language by own right, though very close to Portuguese ● ●

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Galician is the same language as Portuguese ●

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Officialims: RAG and ILG Mainstream and government's

Partial Reintegrationism (Mínimos): ● Asociación Socio-Pedagóxica Galega, now using 2003 RAG's Norm ● In 2003 died de facto, as it assumed RAG's norms ● Political parties supporting it moved as well, very specially BNG

Galician is a dialect of Portuguese ● AGAL ● 1990 Portuguese norm

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Galician t ranslat ion communit y faces t wo challenges relat ing to Galician histor y: Galician is an endangered language who is rapidly dying among young people, who, by the way, is the population who uses technology the most. So translators intends to give young people, or population in general, an opportunity to learn or use the language when they have never used it before. ●

Galician is a language with a very young set of rules and lacking a fixed standard. So the community is at the same time diverse, confused and pioneer regarding to language: ●

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It is diverse as not everyone has been using the same rules all along al these years (linguistic debate permeates the community), it is confused when RAG's new rules are intended to be applied because sometimes are unknown by translators or translations cannot understand them fully . And it is pioneer as most of the time faces the challenge of having to translate new terms, or terms that have been adapted to technology, that had never been translated before. No academy is going to be helpful at this point as they only rule after a term has been introduced but never introduce them.

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References: Consello da Cultura Galega. A sociedade Galega e o Idioma (1992-2003). Comisión Técnica de Lingua e Sociedade. Santiago de Compostela. 2005. Mariño Paz, Ramón. Historia da Lingua Galega. Sotelo Blanco.2º Ed, Santiago de Compostela. Rosarío Álvaez & Henrique Monteagudo, Norma Lingüística e variación. . Consello da Cultura Galega: Instituto da Lingua Galega. Santiago de Compostela. 2004. Salas, A. et al. MtDNA analysis of the Galician population: a genetic edge of European variation. European Journal of Human Genetics. 1998: 365-375. Consello da Cultura Galega: www.loia.org Instituto Galego de Estatistica: www.ige.eu

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To fast food or not to fast food?

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What i18n & l10n means? Internationalising and localising is not just translating, but:

Who's translates? Must meet this criteria: Good knowledge of English Good knowledge of the target language ●Medium to high computing knowledge ●

Set all the necessary to have a system working with some specific scripting system, text flow... ● Localisation, date and time defaults ● Translating interface and other resources like documentation ● Keyboard adapted to locale ● Provide spell checkers and other language resources ● others ●

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A localise d sys tem is an adde d value that can ma ke the di fferent for users: it can push them for wa rd to use a localise d soft wa re but push them back too. Not everybody should be translating!! and those translating should professionalize.

Quality and efficiency It's all about quality, so that's what makes i18n and l10n community management so important to consider. Developer have to always consider internationalising correctly and provide an suitable environment for translator and translators must think on quality and efficiency rather than quantity

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It's a megaproject! METAPROJECT

PANPROJECT

Nuclear: DE, Distro, Office, PIM, GNU

PARAPROJECT Specialised, Utilities, Minor Softw.

Only the essential software needed to have a system with full support for a locale is well above 200000 strings for the Interface only!! This is unachievable for small linguistic communities. Locali sation com mu n ities shou ld organ ize and foc u s on the meta project

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Work flow

Product

METAPROJECT

PANPROJECT

Translation Products: PO Compendia Translation Memories

PARAPROJECT

Remote Storage

.yy Comunity Linguistic Resources

Quality validation TM Server

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Who's the 'Community'?

Volunteers

Government Corporations M.

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2008: The community is called to debate by the Galician Government

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Do's & don'ts M.

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I, me and mi n e Launchpad is closed source Forced to license translations under BDS license ...but, worst of all: t hey broke t ranslat ion work f low! In terms of l10n, Ubunt u think s of himself as a upst ream proje c t when absolutely is not: Translations don't return to the upstream project Credit not always given to the original translator ●Launchpad translator may get confused and think that all launchpad-hosted packages are developed by Ubuntu, ●and their not told that their translations are not going to return back upstream ● ●

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Firefox has been translated uninterruptedly since 0.6, if I can recall it correctly . Mozilla uses a bug system to coordinate translation.

® The eternal #bug #368055

The person who translated it, registered as a coordinator and uploaded translations until 0.8 version when he got tired of continuous changes on the localisation system and methodology. Though not uploading to Mozilla web page he continued to translate, 'non compliant translations' for Mozilla. At some point he unregistered through a bug, but that bug was never closed, it would be open for years. A good bunch of people started to worry of not having a 'official' translation so, one after another, tried to register as coordinators for Galician (and they even translated the software independently) but never were allowed. They all were told that another translator was already registered and that there could not be two coordinators. 'Tell him', was the answer. Well, we told him (poor man!, we were furious at the time with all this) and he asked again to be deleted as coordinator and he was. But then... we were told that localisation system was about to change so we would have to wait to have coordination admitted and translation uploaded. Gosh! The software was translated, everything was technically as Mozilla had been asking but all that bureaucracy was killing all. The case had been publish in the newspapers and Mozilla (Tristan Ninot, to be precise) even responded saying that Galician community were not producing a translation so Mozilla was not responsible of the accusations of not permitting a Galician Translation of Firefox . Then, with a little help of our government then things, in questions of days and weeks, seemed like perfect. We had a coordination and a package uploaded.

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Governments may at some point be tempted to go the fast way and hire a corporation. This is great because thing are done, but has a bad side effect. If done incorrectly, volunteer driven translations dies out. It happened with Galician when government decided to help OOo translation this way. But people who had been translated felt they were not going to have to translate OOo no more so they left the project ' in hands of the government'.

Don't let it go

A pay check methodology will not live long. It depends for how long government is decided to go on paying: when money goes away so goes the translation. In the end there will be no volunteers to do the job Is this method is considered ti should de planned to have the corporation working aside the volunteers and informing volunteers about which are the purposes and intentions of that and how long that continue to be. If it's done this some volunteers may stay.

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Focus on Quality: a linguistic approach W here q ual it y i s lost?

Lang ua ge resou rces

Translation process ● False friends ● Native Grammar ● English Ambiguity (lack of distinction)

Defining a 'Style Guide' ● Introduction ● I18n, l10n, formats... ● Applications and resources ● Methodology ● Linguistic criteria ● Orthography highlights ● Standard variations resolved ● Terminology ● Grammar Style

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Terminology ● Synonyms ● New Terms

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Affecting usability ● Bad quality push the user back ● Incoherence brings confusion

Corpora ● Opentrans

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Glossary ● Structure: ● <word> ● ● ● English concept ● Translation reasoning

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Translation process is a dynamic process that requires debate and continuous correction

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Developers Final Product

I18n

Projects

l10n

Localization Team

Quality Control

Erros Correction

Users

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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Spain License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncsa/3.0/es/deed.en_GB; or, (b) send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 2nd Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

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Miguel Branco IM: [email protected] Mail: [email protected] Blog: www.bittenbythepenguin.wordpress.com

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