On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 7:14 PM, Elanjelian Venugopal <tamiliam@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

This is my first post. I totally agree with much of what FUEL does -- hence my presence here.

By way of introduction, I've been involved in L10N since 2002, having been the owner of Tamil projects for Mozilla (2002-2004), OOo (2003-2011) and LO (2011-present). I'm not a translator, but do this work largely out of curiosity.

Now, the purpose of this note: I saw this question in the e-mail: "Can the FOSS community save 197 endangered Indian languages?" It is an interesting question. But it ultimately misleads, I feel. I don't think FOSS community, or for that matter any IT-oriented communities, including L10N communities, could (or should) be fueled by a desire to strengthen -- let alone save -- languages.

I believe software are simply tools to help people; but because they are generally made in English, there exists a barrier that prevents people of minority languages to use them in their daily lives. L10N, at its core, seeks to lower this barrier so that the software become accessible. It follows, therefore, the success of a localised software, is not determined by the quality of the language used in the software per se, but by the adoption and usage of the said software by the target minority community. And, much of that work, for better or worse, has to happen in the field, away from our computers. Experience teaches us that this work doesn't stop at making software speak the target community's language, but extends to creating sufficient documentation, and training materials, and addressing user concerns. The software should somehow help the target people; must solve their issues; must lighten their burden; must entertain; so on and so forth.

My point: love of language, and work in a language forms but a small, albeit important, part of making software successful.

Sorry for this rather longish, and I suppose, know-all sounding note. Anyway ... cheers, -e.

Thanks for posting here!

I am working for Hindi, mainly. Successfully working for Hindi language on establishing on all major FOSS platform, I thought about working for Maithili language. I worked and the experience is somehow successful, as far as work is concerned. I am unable to say how much user got benefit out of this exercise. Few years back, I came to know Angika is in vulnerable condition. As the condition of Angika is vulnerable so I never dreamt about the huge no of users when I started working with it. But one thing came in the mind, working and establishing it on FOSS platform ( FOSS only because no other platform can support such a 'cause' and only on FOSS, every language is same whether it is Chinese, Japanese Hindi, Tamil like languages or languages like Angika) can be important in several ways. And so I wrote an article also on opensource.com, just to convey to our people, if we do this type of work, we can achieve a lot.

Generally a language is considered a language when one finds well established written tradition in that language, so by having lot of text on information and communication technology platform related to that language, we can be able to archive a great resource.

I agree with you statement (in general) that FOSS community, or for that matter any IT-oriented communities, including L10N communities, could (or should) be fueled by a desire to strengthen -- let alone save -- languages...but I wish they should aspire to work towards this type of goal also. Every week one language is dying, AT LEAST archival of the language is important.

Thanks again for writing here.

regards,

Rajesh

On 20 July 2014 16:46, Rajesh Ranjan <rajesh672@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 2:34 PM, shankar prasad <prasad.mvs@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

Reviewing the FUEL glossary for any language is the important step in creating the community accepted FUEL glossary. All these days we were only doing physical review meetups. I think to get more languages in to FUEL it is better to encourage virtual meetups if any attendee is unable to participate physically for the review meetup.

What do you say?

Regards

Shankar

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Thanks for putting the idea on the list Shankar!

Actually I remember that we discuss somewhere in the monthly meeting also. But we need to facilitate it and we should work in the direction of having virtual meetups. Lets see, we can discuss it in the next monthly meeting hopefully.

Regards,
Rajesh Ranjan

twitter: @kajha
facebook: rajeshkajha
www.rajeshranjan.in

Can the FOSS community save 197 endangered Indian languages?

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