South Africa, 26 July 2007: Translate.org.za, the award winning software translation organisation, proudly announces the availability of a free Afrikaans spell checker for the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird email program.

Spell checking as you type allows users to confidently edit web based forms and compose emails. The spell checker works with the award winning and free Mozilla Firefox web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email programs. The spell checker contains over 170 000 words that have been assembled by dedicated individuals since the 1980s and has since 2004 been updated and maintained by Translate.org.za.

Translate.org.za is a non-profit organisation focusing on delivering Free Software in local languages. They won the African ICT Achiever award in 2006 for bridging the digital divide for their ground breaking and world leading work in providing local language spell checkers, keyboards and software translation. As a result of their work Firefox is the only web browser available in all 11 official languages of South Africa.

The release of this Afrikaans spell checker builds on the recent official release of the Mozilla Firefox web browser in Afrikaans and is helping to create a growing Afrikaans software environment using Free Software. The same spell checker is also available in the Afrikaans version of the free OpenOffice.org office suite.

Building a spell checker is a time consuming process as words need to be assembled, manually checked and validated, and then finally added to the spell checker. Each update adds new words and features to improve the quality of suggestions. Says Director, Dwayne Bailey, “It costs R250 000 a year to improve and keep our Afrikaans spell checker up-to-date. And of course we would also like to improve the quality of our other African language spell checkers.” Funds are raised through Translate.org.za's patron program which companies and individuals who care about language and access to technology are invited to join.

The latest version of the spell checker can be downloaded free from:
http://translate.org.za/content/view/1610/54/

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Dwayne Bailey from Translate.org.za is available for interviews. His fields of specialisation include:

• Free and Open Source Software

• Multilingualism

• Software translation

• Language rights advocacy

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Dwayne Bailey (083 443 7114)