Yes! As part of some exciting projects lying ahead, we are now recruiting for some programmers to join our team in the expansion of our translation tools and language related technology. We are looking for qualified programmers interested in language related technology, preferably with experience in Python (although experience in any object oriented language should be good). This is for full time work based in Pretoria. Experience in FOSS, version control systems, language / translation could set you apart from other applicants.

Interested candidates can send the following by email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or by fax to (012) 460-1095:

1. Your CV
2. Transcripts of your academic results
3. Details of programming projects that you have been involved in and your role in these projects. Preferably supply or point to the code that you have written.
4. A paragraph on why you think software localisation is important.

Dictory

We previously announced our Dictory initiative for the collection and preservation of dictionaries. We have had wonderful feedback so far (several kilograms of dictionaries), and would like to thank everybody who donated dictionaries or spread the word. We hope that more people will be able to contribute dictionaries for the benefit of all.

We set our goal at 5 dictionaries and now have almost 30 Afrikaans dictionaries. We are still earnestly looking for dictionaries and terminology lists in the other African languages – even a translator’s home crafted terminology list would be valued.

Recently we worked hard to create the official release of Thunderbird in Afrikaans. This means that this translation is now officially available on the project website, not just from us. We hope to do a proper press release soon, but wanted to share this news with our enthusiastic supporters.

We thank all the volunteers that helped in translation and testing. Together with Firefox in Afrikaans and the spell checker add-on usable in both programs, these Mozilla products are now providing a wonderful, rich experience for Afrikaans users. Many people are pleasantly surprised when they realise they can have a both a translated web browser and email program as well as check their spelling in web forms and e-mail! We definitely hope to attract more volunteers to help us with all our languages. Remember that the future of your language is in your hands.

Dwayne attended the Open Translation Tools Convergence 2007, which was held in Zagreb, Croatia. This gave an opportunity to meet with several FOSS developers involved in translation related projects, and to demonstrate our tools.

During December I visited Extremadura, Spain as a continuation of our collaboration with the Debian project. Apart from hosting this event, the Government of Extremadura now also supports our project by hosting one of our servers. A big thank you to them!

I also attended FOSDEM 2008 in Brussels. This visit also included a small meeting of people involved in Mozilla localisation, where we had the opportunity to demonstrate some of our work and ideas on translating such big projects. FOSDEM also created the opportunity to meet with several people interested in our work and we built some new relationships that should strengthen our cause. Thanks to Mozilla for making this possible.

People might also be interested to know that our translation tools are now also used by the One Laptop Per Child project, as well as Sun Microsystems for the translation of OpenOffice.org and OpenSolaris.org This is a big feather in our hat to be providing such leadership to the international localisation community from within South Africa. Samuel Murray, who has been very involved in Afrikaans localisation (with us and other organisations), is now leading another Translate project to help newcomers to get started with localisation. The project called Decathlon will run over the course of this year, and is an ideal opportunity for volunteers to get involved in localisation while an expert is available to assist. More information is available at the Decathlon project page.