LEADER 04988nam 2200613Ia 450 001 9910815114603321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-282-57812-X 010 $a9786612578120 010 $a1-55250-473-5 035 $a(CKB)2670000000019253 035 $a(EBL)533906 035 $a(OCoLC)650311586 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000411402 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11306204 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000411402 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10356006 035 $a(PQKB)11065303 035 $a(CaBNvSL)slc00224689 035 $a(CaPaEBR)434012 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL533906 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10389952 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL257812 035 $a(VaAlCD)20.500.12592/3zfd3j 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC533906 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3269045 035 $a(EXLCZ)992670000000019253 100 $a20091116d2010 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aAfrican languages in a digital age $echallenges and opportunities for indigenous language computing /$fDon Osborn 210 $aOttawa $cInternational Development Research Centre$d2010 215 $a1 online resource (167 p.) 311 $a0-7969-2249-7 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $a1. Introduction. 2. Background. Importance of African languages and implications for ICT. What is localisation? Overlapping regional contexts: localisation where? Who localises? What is the current state of localisation across the African region? -- 3. Introducing 'localisation ecology.' An ecological perspective on the environment for localisation. The PLETES model. Dynamic complexes within localisation ecology. Relevance to questions of ICT and localisation -- 4. Linguistic context. Languages, dialects and linguistic geography. Sociolinguistics and language change. Oral and literate traditions. Language and language in education policies. Basic literacy, pluriliteracy and user skills. Terminology and accommodation of ICT concepts -- 5. Technical context I: physical access. Physical and soft access. Computer hardware and operating systems. Connectivity and ICT policy -- 6. Technical context II: internationalisation. The facilitating technical environment. Handling complex scripts: from ASCII to Unicode. The 'last mile' of internationalisation. Internationalisation and localisation -- 7. African-language texts, encoding and fonts. Non-Latin scripts and ICT. Typology of Latin-based African orthographies. Evolution of African-language text use in ICT. Fonts. 8. Keyboards and input systems.Keyboards. Keyboards for Africa. Alternative input methods -- 9. Defining languages in ICT: tags and locales. Languages and the ISO 639 standards. Locale data -- 10. Internet. E-mail. Internationalisation and the web. Web content in and about African languages. Internationalised domain names -- 11. Software localisation. Applications and operating systems. Trends in proprietary software. Trends in free and open-source software. Software localisation in Africa. Web interfaces -- 12. Mobile technology and other specialised applications. Mobile technology. Audio dimensions: voice, text-to-speech and speech recognition. Computer assisted translation -- 13. Achieving sustainable localisation. Needs by kind of localisation and localiser. Understanding the needs of localisers. Analysis of needs from a pan-African perspective. Facilitating communication about localisation -- 14. Summary, recommendations and conclusion. Major themes. Strategic perspective. Conferences and workshops. Training and public education on localisation. Information resources and networking. Languages, policy and planning. Basic localisation and ICT policies and programmes. Africa and ICT standards for localisation. Advanced applications, tools and research. Conclusion. 330 $aWith increasing numbers of computers and penetration of the Internet around the world, localization of the technology and the content it carries into the many languages people speak is becoming an ever more important area for discussion and action. Localization, simply put, includes translation and cultural adaptation of user interfaces and software applications, as well as creation and translation of internet content in diverse languages. It is essential in making information and communication technology more accessible to the populations of the poorer countries, increasing its relevance to t 606 $aAfrican languages 606 $aComputational linguistics 615 0$aAfrican languages. 615 0$aComputational linguistics. 676 $a496.0285 700 $aOsborn$b Donald Zhang$01640379 712 02$aInternational Development Research Centre (Canada) 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910815114603321 996 $aAfrican languages in a digital age$94070387 997 $aUNINA