 |  | Dear Friends,
I've always wondered how much South Africa spends on proprietary software - now that I know I feel quite ill. But Translate.org.za has helped a number of wise consumers save themselves over R1 million, which makes me feel a little better. Translate.org.za is a finalist for ICT Achiever Awards in the category 'Top Civil Society to Bridge the digital Divide in Africa'. This month we introduce you to the WordForge Foundation, which focuses on helping digitally endangered languages. Learn more about Dwayne (me – *blush*), why I do this and how it all started. And with guns blazing we take aim at Sepedi. | |
| | | |  AFRICA BUILDS OVERSEAS IT INDUSTRY
Most of us have heard the estimated statistics on piracy and how much is 'lost' through people using pirated software as opposed to buying it. Today we want to tell you how much consumers have gained from our website alone during October through free downloads of one of the best office suites available – OpenOffice.org. From our site alone, 254 copies of OpenOffice.org have been downloaded during thirty days. This comes to a gain (as opposed to the notion of loss) of around R1 million! So who has gained it? Not Translate.org.za, although that would save us a lot of stress, but the general public. People have saved around R1 million in October alone, by legally downloading the software as opposed to buying a version that does exactly the same thing. Ntsika Msimang of the Meraka Open Source Centre, who has made the shift to Open Source himself, gives us some scarey statistics: “The government IT agency spends between R4 – R10 billion per year on software licenses. If you add software support and services to that, it comes to around R14 – R20 billion per year.” With software and hardware requirements in the public and private sector, South Africa spends about R48 billion a year. A shocking 85% of this amount goes to companies overseas.
These ludicrous figures point to a moral issue. Not a convenience one. Ntsika is the first to admit that moving over to Open Source is painful and takes time, energy and effort, but in the light of the above financial estimates, is the only way forward. Dwayne Bailey, of Translate.org.za, says: “Sometimes IT managers say that they are using the best software for the job, no matter the price. But I think it's important to look at business in the light of macro-economics and the impact that their decisions have on the broader community.” He goes on to explain that every year South Africa has the potential to create a vibrant, local software industry, and ever year we flush it down the drain and continue supporting the IT industry abroad. “Don't business and IT people see themselves as part of the bigger picture,?” asks Dwayne, before likening irresponsible IT users to the uneducated likes of the butch *'ous' who drive their 4X4s on the coastal beaches, with no thought to the local communities, the ecosystem or the future of the area. Translate.org.za encourages people to become IT activists ~ don't sit back and watch Africa throw our innovation and creative ability aside, to build someone else's empire. Join the revolution. Every year is a massive loss, but not through software piracy.
* South African slang for men – Afrikaans word
WORDFORGE BRINGS CAMBODIA AND SOUTH AFRICA TOGETHER
The Translate.org.za team have been zooting around the globe during the past few weeks ~ Ireland, France, Spain ~ and this all in the name of WordForge, an international organisation that aims to help digitally endangered languages. WordForge is a joining of hands between Cambodia and South Africa in a unique partnership between two unlikely nations, started by two men with a vision to improve the quality of software localisation. Javier Sola, Cambodia, who spearheaded KhmerOS and Dwayne Bailey, South Africa, met at a conference in Berlin in 2004. “We had met online before,” says Dwayne, “Javier was using our tools and started documenting them, but it was at a series of conferences around the globe that we started talking about a collaboration that would potentially help people in their quest to localise software to their environment.”
WordForge has secured funding from the Open Society Institute and the International Development Resource Centre (IDRC) to get this project off the ground. Debian, one of Open Source's significant distributions, are interested in using the tools, such as Pootle, that Wordforge (and Translate.org.za) have developed and made available for localisation. Friedel Wolff, Translate.org.za's WordForge programmer, and Javier went to the Debian localisation conference in Spain and met with their team to discuss partnering. “They wanted to discuss ideas and do a needs analysis, as well as get an idea of how far we are from being able to fulfill their needs. I helped them set up a experimental server for the localisation tools,” said Friedel.
In France and Ireland, Dwayne presented the vision of WordForge, which is essentially, to equip others to do more to localise software, and was well received. The strong relationship between Javier in Cambodia and Dwayne in South Africa, has lead to the respective programming teams working together on a translation management system that will enable others to start localisation projects in their own countries. “I like the idea of what has been termed Blowback Localisation” says Dwayne, “It goes against the notion that globalisation is about the developing world absorbing from the so-called developed world. We are creating tools for the developed world.” And whether they know it or not, any OpenOffice.org and many Mozilla users who are translating, are using WordForge's tools already.
A CLOSER LOOK AT OUR CONNECTIONS: GETTING TO KNOW ... Dwayne Bailey
>From a start to his career at a nuclear power station to his forging ahead in the uncharted territory of translation of software into South African languages, Dwayne's history is intriguing and varied. As Dwayne was completing a degree in Business Science (Information Systems) at the University of Cape Town, after stints at Cape Technikon and Koeberg Power Station, he started the Linux Warehouse. “It really should have been called the Linux Shoebox,” laughs Dwayne, “as that was more like it. I really just sold Linux Cds to the public from a shoebox.” Obsidian Systems, one of South Africa's leading Linux pioneer companies, bought the company from him and offered him a job, that eventually led to him being Cape Town Branch Manager and later, a Director of the company.
So what led him to start translating software into local languages? “I had access to all this amazing software which I knew was worth millions, for nothing, and wanted to give something back,” says Dwayne. Not being a programmer, Dwayne wondered what that contribution could be. His involvement in a church in Gugulethu where the predominant language was Xhosa, gave him the right start to what would become South Africa's leading localisation language project. What finally kickstarted him into action was a press release sent out by a local Linux company stating that they were translating software into Zulu. Dwayne, knowing that this was untrue, was furious and immediately his whirlpool of thoughts were pushed into action, and he started the project. Using his Obsidian marketing budget, he hired a Xhosa translator to start the ball rolling. Obsidian was extremely supportive and made it possible for Dwayne to follow the dream.
Milestones along the way included early funding from the Shuttleworth Foundation in 2002, the release of OpenOffice.org in 2004 in Zulu, Northern Sotho and Afrikaans, and taking the plunge to leave the safe and fun Obsidian space to launch into full-time work with Translate.org.za. “The fact that I can really only speak English put me off initially as I thought, what will people think? This guy doesn't even speak our language! Then I thought about Emily Hobhouse, the English women who helped in the concentration camps in the South African War (Boer War), and realised that I could play my part regardless,”explains Dwayne.
When he is not co-ordinating Translate.org.za and being an activist in the Open Source and language arena, Dwayne loves walking to clear his head, reading, watching DVDs and going to the church that he is involved in. Living in Pretoria with Heather and their two children, Dwayne is enjoying this exciting phase of the project's growth, but not to the detriment of his family. “I love spending time with my wife and two daughters. Sometimes it requires playing with dolls, but I am secure enough in my masculinity to count this small cost.”
LOOSE CANNON – (Dwayne Bailey) Sesotho sa Leboa or Sepedi
You might have heard of a language called Sesotho sa Leboa or Northern Sotho in English, in fact you might have heard it called Sepedi by many people who say they speak Northern Sotho. Are you confused? Well probably not as confused, and frustrated, as the many people who speak Sesotho sa Leboa but don't speak Sepedi. And you are in good company, even South Africa's constitution is confused! You might ask how one language ends up with so many names? And that is the real problem, it is not one language. Northern Sotho, in fact, embraces around 30 mutually intelligible dialects, think of it as the purse that holds together a number of gold coins. The dominant dialect is Sepedi, the language spoken by the Bapedi. But it is not the only language of Northern Sotho.
In the interim constitution on 1993 the language was correctly referred to as Sesotho sa Leboa. But in the final constitution of 1996 it was changed to Sepedi, which as we saw previously is in fact incorrect. We are yet to find out exactly why this was in fact changed. Was it a confused committee with no linguistic input or was it a Sepedi speaker promoting their own cause created through confusion about their own language. Whatever the cause may have been the confusion created in fact goes against the spirit of the constitution which urges the promotion of marginalised African languages yet itself has created a situation of marginalisation. The dialects of Northern Sotho have been marginalised and excluded.
We haven't yet mentioned the fact that many Sesotho sa Leboa speakers are offended when you call them Sepedi speakers as they do not speak Sepedi and are not Bapedi. The confusion runs deeper as Government institutions are now also confused, PanSALB promotes Sesotho sa Leboa, while National Language Services talks of Sepedi.
The truth of the matter is that Sesotho sa Leboa is the correct mother tongue name for the language that the constitution wanted to empower. Sepedi is merely a dialect of Sesotho sa Leboa and as a language does not represent the whole of the Northern Sotho speaking populace. If you where using English names the language would be Northern Sotho and the dialect would be called Pedi. At Translate.org.za we have been inconsistent in the past but we now strictly make use of the term Sesotho sa Leboa which is in line with the interim constitution and in line with PanSALB, the organisation tasked with promoting language and protecting language rights. We now work hard to avoid using the term Sepedi. There is an emerging effort, of which Translate.org.za is a part, aimed at addressing the Sepedi vs Sesotho sa Leboa naming issue. If you feel strongly about this as we do then please join up.
PARTING SHOT – Quote of the month
“It is with a great sense of pride that I utilise a word processor in my mother tongue, Zulu. Working through a computer in my mother tongue instills dignity and motivation. It puts me on a par with other so-called first world languages. Through your impeccable work the indigenous African languages have positively evolved and moved with the times.” Thembalihle Sidaki in an email to Translate.org.za
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| Dwayne Bailey
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