PRESS RELEASE:

Mozilla Thunderbird Soars in Afrikaans

South Africa – 12 March 2008 – Mozilla Thunderbird, the popular free and open source email client, is now available in Afrikaans. The Afrikaans translations are the work of the multi-award winning translation organisation, Translate.org.za.

Dwayne Bailey, managing director of Translate.org.za, “This is the first official release of Mozilla Thunderbird in Afrikaans and is the result of many hours of testing and checking to ensure we create an excellent mother-tongue email experience.

Together with the existing Mozilla Firefox web browser and Afrikaans spell checker this makes using a computer a pleasant experience for many Afrikaans speakers.”

Translate.org.za, which recently won the Pan South African Language Board award for Multilingualism and Nation Building, is the organisation behind the effort to ensure that all South Africans can use computer software in their mother tongue. The official release of Thunderbird in Afrikaans adds to the existing repertoire of Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org in Afrikaans and other South African languages. In addition Translate.org.za has also created a South African keyboard which helps Afrikaans speakers type correctly and an Afrikaans spell checker. All of their work is released as Free and Open Source Software so that all language users can benefit.

Scott MacGregor, lead engineer for Thunderbird at Mozilla, highlighting some of the new features, said: “Thunderbird 2 has powerful new features and proven security, delivering an improved email experience to users worldwide. In Thunderbird 2, we incorporated the proven benefits of tagging to email. Tagging initially gained popularity on blogs, photo and link-sharing sites as an intuitive way to organise online information so users could easily find desired content.”

Users of Thunderbird 2 can also choose from hundreds of add-ons to customise the application for their needs. By integrating professional networking tools, VOIP calling, and shared address books directly into Thunderbird, users can expand the email client into a versatile information and communications hub.

Thunderbird 2 is built using the same open source development model as the award-winning Mozilla Firefox Web browser. This development process incorporates feedback directly from users and the talents of Mozilla’s community of open source contributors to deliver a powerful, free and modern email application.

Thunderbird 2 is available now as a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux, in almost 40 language versions at www.getthunderbird.com.

ENDS

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 or +27 12 460 1095)