Free software for languages big and small: multilingual openness

1
Free software for languages big
and small: multilingual openness
Internet Solutions
www.codesyntax.com
Luistxo Fernandez
Azitain Poligonoa 3 - K
E-20600 EIBAR
Tel: ++34 943 821 780
Fax: ++34 943 820 669
Bilbo – 2011.11.12

Librecon 2014 Bilbao
Free software, langs big & small
2014.11.12
15 years ago
A personal story. 3 types decide to work in the internet. We
happen to be bilingual
Business case: Well, bilingual sites will be needed locally;
multilingual sites will be needed globally.
We'll learn how to do it right, we'll become rich.

2014.11.12
Not rich yet, but hey, it was a good plan
Web platforms in the year 1999 were nor really adapted to
multilingualism, really
There was a niche... there was really work to do.
Platforms had to be transformed, tinkered, changed from
the inside...
It had to be free software.

2014.11.12
Free software was the obvious choice
Code had to be tinkered and improved, you needed access
to the tools to change them and make them work
multilingually
And the free software community had already its own tools,
its own metodology: GNU Gettext

2014.11.12
Choices (back at the times...)
Python.
Zope.
A way to adapt the GNU Gettext methodology into Python,
Localizer, a creation by a web-programmer in a university
(Juan David Ibáñez, of Universitat Jaume I, Castelló).

2014.11.12
Choices (back at the times...)

2014.11.12
Today.
Python.

2014.11.12
Today.
Python.
All we learned about i18n & l10n,
locales, unicode, .po files...
Ad-hoc solutions not so necessary
(Plone and Django, the platforms we use today are, like all
decent modern day tools, well adapted to i18n)
We still friends with JD Ibáñez, a brilliant programmer

2014.11.12
Today. Django.

2014.11.12
Today. Django. Any Django install.

2014.11.12
All we learned. The things we did.
We fought the Unicode errors...
Blogging platforms in Basque...
The particular needs of
multilingual CMSs...
As Plone or Django rose, the localised Basque versions of
those platforms...

2014.11.12
From multilingual to... Multisite, multicountry
Plone, and other open source CMS
are prepared to manage a situation
like this one.
But you need the know-how.

2014.11.12
Meanwhile, as i18n advanced in web development
thanks to free software...

2014.11.12
Meanwhile, as i18n advanced in web development
Ubuntu is wonderful. Enjoying Ubuntu in Basque is great.
As a working environment.
As the family OS at home.

2014.11.12
However, as i18n advanced in web development
Web ecosystems rose:
Google, Facebook, Twitter
Basque and many other languages
have a partial presence there...
Mixed feelings:
• collective translating (work for them for free)
• no sharing of the strings...
• the importance of having those in your language

2014.11.12
However, as i18n advanced in web development
Mobile platforms, unclear situation
iOS closed to small languages,
and Apple a clearly hostile company to us.
Android is free, and Android localisation attempts have been
made by the community... but, distribution and control
issues complicate the matter
Google just released Basque within Lollipop, yet...

2014.11.12
SoLoMo
Social Local Mobile

2014.11.12
An extra lesson:
It's not about the menu, it's about the food

2014.11.12
A conversation in Facebook in Yucatec (interface in Basque)

2014.11.12
It's not about the menu, it's about the food
Big languages take food for granted.
Small languages... tricky.
• Social interaction easier in some networks than in others.
• Efforts are announced, but language death is a fact for
many languages...
• Are there memes in your language?

2014.11.12
Meme
'A meme (/mi m/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, ˈ ː or style that spreads
from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for
carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted
from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or
other imitable phenomena'
A term coined by Richard Dawkins.
Yep. It does have a serious meaning, but memes are also this....

2014.11.12
Meme
when they give me notice of 'needed
changes' one day before the
report/project must be delivered

2014.11.12
Basque memes are alive!
what the Basques feel when they see the
Catalans lead the way

2014.11.12
Basque memes are alive!
'impossible Basque compact verbs meme': dizerdit, datsegit, dalovit,
narruskioke...
Not easy to grasp. Language knowledge level (also Spanish, in many cases)
and experience with Twitter humour

2014.11.12
In the SoLoMo environment...
Social and mobile interaction: key issues for language
reproduction.
These things depend more on
• The big powers of the Internet: Google, Facebook,
Twitter
• Increasingly, mobile experience
Do these things depend less on free software?

2014.11.12
And yet,
we must try

2014.11.12
Twitter can't tell Basque from Indonesian
But Langid can.

2014.11.12
And with Langid, and more, you may build things

2014.11.12
And with Langid, and more, you may build things
Trending topic detection, twitter user
rankings, automated aggregation of news...

2014.11.12
Trending topic detection, twitter user
rankings, automated aggregation of news...
...with languages big & small

32
2014.11.12
Eskerrik asko
Luistxo Fernandez - LFernandez@codesyntax.com
twitter.com/luistxo - http://www.codesyntax.com

Free software for languages big and small: multilingual openness

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