[ACTION] FirefoxOS and locales in Africa

[delphine]

Hello fellow localizers

I am reaching out to you today with some fantastic news. After the recent interest and focus on Indic locales for FirefoxOS - which Jeff so wonderfully described in his "Call to Action" here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mozilla.dev.l10n/$20[ACTION]$20Firefox$20OS$20localization$20for$20reference$20device$20/mozilla.dev.l10n/X1TmyDLCZHI/mz9lEGbjAq8J - we have heard of strong interest in languages spoken in Africa as well \o/

So, what does this mean? This means that in upcoming months we will be getting more and more partner requests interested in shipping many African locales. This is also a great opportunity in order to get your localization up and running on the Flame reference device, which is coming very, very shortly.

Please reach out here if you have any questions about this or if you need to get set-up. Also don't hesitate to communicate your overall interest in working on the localization of your locale on FirefoxOS - and this of course even if you're not working an locale from Africa. In fact as you know, we're still working hard on getting more and more locales available on FirefoxOS device, independent of any particular partner request.

Thanks all for all the hard work everyone! As you see, it's definitely paying off.

cheers
delphine

[Ibraahiima SAAR]

Hi Delphine
It's good news for African countries all the more so Africa is the ultimate
mobile contient with its 50% population under 15 years old (Sub-Saharan
Africa)! Unfortunately, smartphones are either ridiculously basic or too
dear for the average user. And believe me when I showed my Keon to dozens
explaining what Firefox OS was all about, the question was: when???
As far languages are concerned, most operators will only want to ship
French, English as these are official languages in most countries. African
languages are usually neglected by those who only use "official" languages
understood by hardly 30% of the population (Senegal for instance).
Also, unlike Europe and many other regions, in Africa you don't have one
country = one language as for example Italia-Italian, Poland-Polish... It
is much more complex than that and sometimes competition between languages
is harsh in the sense that more powerful languages (those of politically
dominant groups for instance) tend to impose their language upon the rest
of the population. Just to mention that Mozilla has to think about the
approach that they will use to deploy Firefox OS in these regions with
complex language configurations.
But I am convinced that many languages will join us as we are trying to
contact potential contributors for more major languages like Nigerian Hausa
or Igbo for instance. As far as Fulah (Peul) in concerned, I've had Firefox
OS localized and running for almost a year now on my Keon. And I just
cannot wait to see it on the reference device!

Cheers all and thanks again Delphine for this great update.
Ibrahima SARR

[Chris Hofmann]

On 5/24/14 6:38 AM, Ibraahiima SAAR wrote:
> Hi Delphine
> It's good news for African countries all the more so Africa is the ultimate
> mobile contient with its 50% population under 15 years old (Sub-Saharan
> Africa)! Unfortunately, smartphones are either ridiculously basic or too
> dear for the average user. And believe me when I showed my Keon to dozens
> explaining what Firefox OS was all about, the question was: when???
> As far languages are concerned, most operators will only want to ship
> French, English as these are official languages in most countries. African
> languages are usually neglected by those who only use "official" languages
> understood by hardly 30% of the population (Senegal for instance).
> Also, unlike Europe and many other regions, in Africa you don't have one
> country = one language as for example Italia-Italian, Poland-Polish... It
> is much more complex than that and sometimes competition between languages
> is harsh in the sense that more powerful languages (those of politically
> dominant groups for instance) tend to impose their language upon the rest
> of the population. Just to mention that Mozilla has to think about the
> approach that they will use to deploy Firefox OS in these regions with
> complex language configurations.

Hi Ibraahiima,

No one said this is going to be easy ;-)

Yes, there is lots of work ahead. It seems like operator attitudes are
changing
so that will be helpful. I think they have found, like in India, that
expanding
the number of languages supported is critical to meeting the demands
of the large opportunity to sell more devices and increase the number of
subscribers accessing the networks in places like Africa. Until more
languages
are supported the "big opportunity" is not a big as projected. Education
about about using FirefoxOS and the Web will also be important as people
make the transition from feature phones to smart phones.

One thing we will try to do soon is to breakdown each region, country
and even city
to examine the full set of languages that make sense. Information and
insight like
you provided above is a good start. We will probably get a wiki page
set up
soon to capture this information and detail the number of native language
speakers that can be reached with better support for more languages.

Thanks again for your help as always.

-chofmann

> But I am convinced that many languages will join us as we are trying to
> contact potential contributors for more major languages like Nigerian Hausa
> or Igbo for instance. As far as Fulah (Peul) in concerned, I've had Firefox
> OS localized and running for almost a year now on my Keon. And I just
> cannot wait to see it on the reference device!
>
> Cheers all and thanks again Delphine for this great update.
> Ibrahima SARR

> _______________________________________________
> dev-l10n mailing list
> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-l10n

[Michael Wolf]

Ibraahiima SAAR schrieb:

> But I am convinced that many languages will join us as we are trying to
> contact potential contributors for more major languages like Nigerian Hausa
> or Igbo for instance.

Hello Ibraahiima,

I don't want to appear too pessimistic but are there localizers enough
for those languages?

Regards,

Michael W.


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[Ibraahiima SAAR]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comments. Yes, from the points you made I am sure you have
an excellent understanding of the situation. I am really excited about
Firefox OS in Africa because many smartphones used in the continent have
strange OS from China and many are imitations of already existing Brands
(which is probably illegal). SO Firefox OS is not another OS but THE OS as
the other two well known OS's are usually inacessible to most people
because they are much too expensive. And something I absolutely loved to
learn, is the support for Dual SIM!!! Given in Africa most people have on
SIM per Operator!!

Yes a wiki page would help gather more information from people in various
regions.

Regards
Ibrahima

[Ibraahiima SAAR]

Hi
Michael
There are more than enough localizers as these are "big" languages with 35
million+ speakers (Hausa has another 20 million as second language).
Thanks
Ibrahima

[Axel Hecht]

Yes, fx os supports DSDS (dual sim, dual standby), and the Flame
actually has two SIM slots.

Axel

[Ibraahiima SAAR]

Thanks Axel
I've seen from the localization work that DSDS is supported but I did not
know
there were actual devices. I just cannot wait to hol a Flame device!
Cheers