Localization

Localization is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

Why it is important to provide software in Tibetan

One of the main parts of culture is its language. When the language dies, the real culture dies; it lives on only in museums. Computers are a big part of the world culture today, enabling all people to talk to each other. If Tibetan is not used in the world of computers, then Tibetan culture cannot be part of that world.

Any non-techie who knows Tibetan, can help in these projects by doing translations. The techie person will know how to get the translations into the correct form for the software.

Tibetan localization codes

There are codes in a standard format to use for languages. The first part is the language, and the second (in CAPS) is the current politically recognised country it is spoken in:

bo_BO - Tibetan in Tibet (in past)
bo_IN - Tibetan in India
bo_US - Tibetan in United States
bo_ZH - Tibetan inside China

Tibetan localization projects

These are projects that are wished for, that are under way, or that have been done.

• Filezilla (popular FTP client): http://filezilla-project.org/translations.php
• Menalto Gallery (web photo gallery program): http://gallery.menalto.com/wiki/G1_Translation_Related_Documents
  • How to localize Gallery G1
  • Current localizations
• XPDF (Ubuntu) https://launchpad.net/xpdf-intl/trunk

Check link for status (developer is looking for Tibetan translations for computer terms - July 2010)

• WordPress.org (CMS) http://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress

A project is just starting to localize WordPress in Tibetan. (9 January 2011)

• WordPress plugins and themes:
  • Translating WordPress Plugins & Themes
  • Localizing WordPress Themes & Plugins

Websites in Tibetan

By no means all of them! This is just a list of some representative sites using Unicode Tibetan and good web practices.

• Central Tibetan Administration (WordPress)
• Central Tibetan Relief Committee (flat file)
• Dawa Karpo (Joomla)
• Khabda.org (WordPress)
• Shambala Post (Joomla)

External Links

• Internationalization and localization, at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization
• Language localization, at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_localization

What it is; the difference between internationalization and localization; the localization process.