Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

Skype Māori

It is pleasing to see the plethora of mainstream software either being translated into various languages, or at least the option to translate the product yourself.

On Thursday i begun translating or localizing Skype into Māori.

This will join other popular software that is available or will currently be available in Māori language including:

Open Office and Mozilla are being translated over at www.dear.maori.nz.
Google is now in Māori language – awaiting Google approval.
Windows XP, Office XP
Moodle and many others.

The total corpus of Māori translations that i work with are topping 30,000 definitions. There are duplicates contained in the list which once edited will be made public.

With 3182 translations and over half of them completed at the time of writing, i hope i can distribute Skype Māori file late next week.

I understand from Skype web site that minority language files will not become part of the default installation for the foreseeable future. Perhaps in the future minority languages such Māori will for part of the default installation.

As i am writing this, i am reminded of a media interview i had about 10 or 11 years ago with Ariana Tikao. Ariana asked me about my future vision for Māori language in software and the Internet. I responded with a dream that software including Microsoft Windows would be available in Māori language and that there would be Māori representation on the Internet.

At the time i was almost embarrassed to predict such outrageous claims. It is a sign of the major advancement non English speaking languages have made in technology in the past ten years.

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DISCLAIMER: This post is the personal opinion of Dr Karaitiana Taiuru and is not reflective of the opinions of any organisation that Dr Karaitiana Taiuru is a member of or associates with, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

6 responses to “Skype Māori”

  1. Kiharoa (Konrad) Dear Avatar
    Kiharoa (Konrad) Dear

    Ki ora Karaitiana,

    Just to give a bit more detail on the Mozilla and OpenOffice translations…

    The Mozilla work is focused on Firefox 3+, with a translation of the user interface to te reo Māori, and customization to use relevant resources – for example, Google Māori as the default search method.

    With respect to OpenOffice, the focus is initially on delivering an integrated set of language tools, i.e. Spell-Checking, Hyphenation and Thesaurus. Then
    once the Firefox work is complete, translating the OpenOffice interface to te reo Māori.

    The translation work for both Firefox and OpenOffice will be available for anyone to contribute through a translation portal, that will help translators with terminology, suggestions, reviews, and support.

    If anyone is interested the work I’m doing has now shifted to kiharoa.dear.maori.nz.

  2. Kiharoa (Konrad) Dear Avatar
    Kiharoa (Konrad) Dear

    Ki ora Karaitiana,

    Just to give a bit more detail on the Mozilla and OpenOffice translations…

    The Mozilla work is focused on Firefox 3+, with a translation of the user interface to te reo Māori, and customization to use relevant resources – for example, Google Māori as the default search method.

    With respect to OpenOffice, the focus is initially on delivering an integrated set of language tools, i.e. Spell-Checking, Hyphenation and Thesaurus. Then
    once the Firefox work is complete, translating the OpenOffice interface to te reo Māori.

    The translation work for both Firefox and OpenOffice will be available for anyone to contribute through a translation portal, that will help translators with terminology, suggestions, reviews, and support.

    If anyone is interested the work I’m doing has now shifted to kiharoa.dear.maori.nz.

  3. tetaka Avatar
    tetaka

    Kia ora Karaitiana me ngā mihi,

    Two points;

    1) Do you use Skype much? Is it really popular? I haven’t used it all but have a lot of whānau overseas (who have computers) so it seems like it may be a good way to keep in touch with them.

    2) At a recent conference I attended in France there were a number of papers that looked at blogging in a threatened language. Do you know of anyone who blogs in Māori? Is that something we get into here?

    Again, ka nui te mihi

    Nāku noa nei, nā Te Taka

  4. tetaka Avatar
    tetaka

    Kia ora Karaitiana me ngā mihi,

    Two points;

    1) Do you use Skype much? Is it really popular? I haven’t used it all but have a lot of whānau overseas (who have computers) so it seems like it may be a good way to keep in touch with them.

    2) At a recent conference I attended in France there were a number of papers that looked at blogging in a threatened language. Do you know of anyone who blogs in Māori? Is that something we get into here?

    Again, ka nui te mihi

    Nāku noa nei, nā Te Taka

  5. Karaitiana Avatar
    Karaitiana

    Tēnā koe Konrad, Thanks for the update Konrad. :-).

    Tēnā koe Te Taka, Yes i use Skype on a daily basis for both national and international contacts. I believe there are a lot of Māori using Skype. A few years ago it was used for te reo wānanga and now as an alternative to the phone by many Māori i know.

    Blogging in te reo Māori. My colleagues in China blog in Chinese. I am not familiar with any te reo Māori blogs nor can i find anything in the Google Blog search http://blogsearch.google.co.nz/?hl=en&tab=wb
    searching various Māori words.

    perhaps it is time to put the tono out there ? .

  6. Karaitiana Avatar
    Karaitiana

    Tēnā koe Konrad, Thanks for the update Konrad. :-).

    Tēnā koe Te Taka, Yes i use Skype on a daily basis for both national and international contacts. I believe there are a lot of Māori using Skype. A few years ago it was used for te reo wānanga and now as an alternative to the phone by many Māori i know.

    Blogging in te reo Māori. My colleagues in China blog in Chinese. I am not familiar with any te reo Māori blogs nor can i find anything in the Google Blog search http://blogsearch.google.co.nz/?hl=en&tab=wb
    searching various Māori words.

    perhaps it is time to put the tono out there ? .

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