Free software for languages big and small: multilingual openness

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Internet Solutionswww.codesyntax.com

Free software for languages big and small: multilingual openness

Luistxo Fernandez

Azitain Poligonoa 3 - KE-20600 EIBAR

Tel: ++34 943 821 780Fax: ++34 943 820 669

Bilbo – 2011.11.12

Librecon 2014 BilbaoFree software, langs big & small2014.11.12

15 years ago

A personal story. 3 types decide to work in the internet. We happen to be bilingual

Business case: Well, bilingual sites will be needed locally; multilingual sites will be needed globally.

We'll learn how to do it right, we'll become rich.


Not rich yet, but hey, it was a good plan

Web platforms in the year 1999 were nor really adapted to multilingualism, really

There was a niche... there was really work to do.

Platforms had to be transformed, tinkered, changed from the inside...

It had to be free software.


Free software was the obvious choice

Code had to be tinkered and improved, you needed access to the tools to change them and make them work multilingually

And the free software community had already its own tools, its own metodology: GNU Gettext


Choices (back at the times...)

Python.

Zope.

A way to adapt the GNU Gettext methodology into Python, Localizer, a creation by a web-programmer in a university (Juan David Ibáñez, of Universitat Jaume I, Castelló).


Choices (back at the times...)


Today.

Python.


Today.

Python.

All we learned about i18n & l10n,

locales, unicode, .po files...

Ad-hoc solutions not so necessary

(Plone and Django, the platforms we use today are, like all decent modern day tools, well adapted to i18n)

We still friends with JD Ibáñez, a brilliant programmer


Today. Django.


Today. Django. Any Django install.


All we learned. The things we did.

We fought the Unicode errors...

Blogging platforms in Basque...

The particular needs of

multilingual CMSs...

As Plone or Django rose, the localised Basque versions of those platforms...


From multilingual to... Multisite, multicountry

Plone, and other open source CMS

are prepared to manage a situation

like this one.

But you need the know-how.


Meanwhile, as i18n advanced in web development thanks to free software...


Meanwhile, as i18n advanced in web development thanks to free software...

Ubuntu is wonderful. Enjoying Ubuntu in Basque is great.

As a working environment.

As the family OS at home.


However, as i18n advanced in web development thanks to free software...

Web ecosystems rose:

Google, Facebook, Twitter

Basque and many other languages

have a partial presence there...

Mixed feelings:

• collective translating (work for them for free)

• no sharing of the strings...

• the importance of having those in your language


However, as i18n advanced in web development thanks to free software...

Mobile platforms, unclear situation

iOS closed to small languages,

and Apple a clearly hostile company to us.

Android is free, and Android localisation attempts have been made by the community... but, distribution and control issues complicate the matter

Google just released Basque within Lollipop, yet...


SoLoMo

Social Local Mobile


An extra lesson:

It's not about the menu, it's about the food


An extra lesson:



A conversation in Facebook in Yucatec (interface in Basque)



Big languages take food for granted.

Small languages... tricky.

• Social interaction easier in some networks than in others.

• Efforts are announced, but language death is a fact for many languages...

• Are there memes in your language?


Meme

'A meme (/ mi m/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads ˈ ːfrom person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena'

A term coined by Richard Dawkins.

Yep. It does have a serious meaning, but memes are also this....


Meme

when they give me notice of 'needed changes' one day before the

report/project must be delivered


Basque memes are alive!

what the Basques feel when they see the Catalans lead the way


Basque memes are alive!

'impossible Basque compact verbs meme': dizerdit, datsegit, dalovit, narruskioke...

Not easy to grasp. Language knowledge level (also Spanish, in many cases) and experience with Twitter humour


Social and mobile interaction: key issues for language reproduction.

These things depend more on

• The big powers of the Internet: Google, Facebook, Twitter

• Increasingly, mobile experience

Do these things depend less on free software?

In the SoLoMo environment...


And yet, we must try


Twitter can't tell Basque from Indonesian

But Langid can.


And with Langid, and more, you may build things


And with Langid, and more, you may build things

Trending topic detection, twitter user rankings, automated aggregation of news...


Trending topic detection, twitter user rankings, automated aggregation of news...

...with languages big & small

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Eskerrik asko

Luistxo Fernandez - [email protected]

twitter.com/luistxo - http://www.codesyntax.com