Increasing African language coverage in Firefox

[Dwayne Bailey]

Hi,

Quick update on the status of the African languages for Firefox, these
are being translated in Pootle at
http://pootle.locamotion.org/projects/firefox

Most of the teams working here have very low technical skills. Working
on Pootle allows allows them to focus on translation as they slowly
increase their skills.

Active: Afrikaans, Akan, Luganda, Northern Sotho, Songhay, Zulu, SA
English - a large proportion of these languages came our of the ANLoc
effort, we haven't lost any which is great news. The rapid release
cycle has I think actually helped here as the translation work between
releases in manageable making it less daunting to keep your translations
up-to-date.

New in Firefox 7: Swahili looks like it will be in for Firefox 7. This
is one professional localiser plus an emerging group around Mozilla Kenya.

For Firefox 8?: Wolof and Fulah are at 100% now but need some major
review and testing. I hope that these will make it into Firefox 8.

So progress has been good: 6+1+2 - hopefully we'll be at 9 languages
really soon.

Non-African: We've had some new people join that aren't African these
include: Urdu and Sakha (or Yakut). The server is now not just for
Africans.

If you have teams that need to go through a nursery process then send
them to Pootle. The original ANLoc team is starting to take on more
guidance roles to new and existing teams. If you feel like helping then
feel free to email me, some French speaking skills could be helpful for
some of the teams from West Africa.

--
regards
Dwayne