Well said!

Debbie

Debbie Garside
CEO

The World Language Documentation Centre
Corner House
Barn Street
Haverfordwest
Pembrokeshire SA61 1BW
Wales UK

Tel: 0044 1437 766441
Fax: 0044 1437 766173

Web: http://www.thewldc.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: a12n-collaboration-bounces@...
> [mailto:a12n-collaboration-bounces@...] On Behalf Of
> Martin Benjamin
> Sent: 10 April 2008 16:40
> To: A12n tech support
> Subject: Re: [A12n-Collab] "Microsoft to launch applications
> in three Nigerianlanguages"
>
> One important failure in the Microsoft methodology, the way I
> see it, is
> that they insist on keeping their terminology lists
> proprietary. The logic is impeccable, and perfectly flawed.
>
> The logic, from the corporate perspective, is: "We've spent
> our treasure to develop IT terms in a language. The terms
> add value to our product.
> If we share the terms, someone else will come and use them
> for their product, and we lose twice. We lose once because
> the other company gets for free something that we paid good
> money for. We lose a second time because now our product
> doesn't have any special added value over the competitors, so
> we cannot charge a price premium that will make the
> investment worthwhile."
>
> The flaw in the argument is: If the terminology lists are
> secret, then users won't be able to understand the software.
> If you can't understand the software, you can't use the
> software. If you can't use the software, you won't buy the software.
>
> What a firm in Microsoft's position should really be doing is
> sharing their terminology lists widely and doing everything
> they can to get other companies to issue their software in
> local languages. Think of it from the user perspective: "If
> all my software is in English except for a few applications
> from Microsoft in Yoruba, but I can't understand the Yoruba
> because many of the words are newly developed technical
> vocabulary for which I have no reference source, then I would
> prefer to just continue using my Microsoft products in
> English. However, if I can also run everything else on my
> machine in Yoruba, and all my other software is using terms
> that are consistent with Microsoft products, then I would
> prefer to use Yoruba at all times."
>
> In the experience with Swahili, the Microsoft terminology to
> this day has remained (as far as I know) behind a proprietary
> firewall. A recent post on a Tanzanian IT list gave people
> complicated instructions about how they could use some tricks
> within Word to access meanings for particular phrases in the
> Swahili localization, if they had it installed
> - but a user shouldn't need to be an IT professional with
> secret knowledge in order to use a computer program in their
> own language.
> Microsoft made noises early on that they would release their
> wordlist to the public, but if that has happened they haven't
> let the public know about it.
>
> I suggest they should take just the opposite approach now.
> Publish the wordlists! Those wordlists are the user's
> manuals for their software in each language. If other
> companies take those wordlists and develop software based on
> them, be happy! Those other companies will be expanding the
> overall interest in and market for software in those
> languages. Microsoft will win on the strength of their core
> products, and they will see the market for those products
> expand because the availability of complete computer
> environments for each language will greatly expand the number
> of consumers in the market.
>
> The language data will not make Microsoft money on the
> Nigerian market.
> Creating a market that wants to take advantage of the
> language data is what will make money for Microsoft in the
> long term. One would think that a company that is willing to
> invest in localizing software for African markets would be
> working from a long term perspective. Making their
> terminology lists available for the public would be evidence
> of such forward thinking.
>
> Martin Benjamin
> http://kamusiproject.org
>
> Andrew Cunningham wrote:
> > interesting for what it doesn't say as much as what it does say.
> >
> > Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo only have input locales in Windows Vista
> >
> > Yoruba requires a version of Uniscribe and appropriate
> fonts to render
> > correctly, this combination currently restricts it to Windows Vista
> > (if you include need for UI font capable of rendering Yoruba.
> >
> > Microsoft currently do not ship Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba
> keyboard layouts.
> >
> > I'd assume that for a Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo LIPs for Office to be
> > useful, they'll need to roll out an ELK including support for these
> > three languages?
> >
> > Andrew
> >
>

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