One of the unique things about growing up in Hawaiʻi is firsthand exposure to post-colonialism, one of the biggest issues facing the nascent world economy. While Hawaiʻi is not as bad off as, say, Madagascar, you still see the restrained economy, the class stratification, and the struggle among native people to retain their culture, identity, and language.
My high school, Roosevelt, is still widely known as having been an “English standard” school. That is to say, it’s a school where the classes were conducted in standard English, and the faculty and students were expected to speak standard English at all times.
The standard part is important, because people in Hawaiʻi don’t usually speak standard English. We have our own language, known formally as Hawaiian Creole English, and informally as pidgin. I hadn’t considered pidgin to be its own language, but my attempts to demonstrate its accessibility to other English speakers merely proved how different it is.
One of the more sinister aspects of colonialism is the idea of spreading civilization and culture. Even when the native tongue was not violently repressed, it was certainly stigmatized. To speak Hawaiian, let alone pidgin, was to wallow in ignorance and to be denied a place among the new economy. While Hawaii’s last king, Kalākaua, did what he could to revive the culture, the language, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, continued to suffer.
Although it’s considered an official language, and although the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has sought to preserve the language through its Center for Hawaiian Studies, it remains irrelevant to daily life. Even if you wanted to live your life in Hawaiian, the minute you sit down at your computer, you’re right back to using English.
Apple has done their part by making localization relatively simple. You can select endangered languages like ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and Malagasy as primary, with languages like English and French as secondary choices. Applications on the system, and the system itself, can then be operated in that language, assuming the localization work has been done.
The rub, of course, is this last point. Most software is not localized for these relatively obscure languages. That has to change. If a people want to preserve their culture and their heritage, they need to be able to live in their language, which means they need to compute in their language, which means they need to have applications localized in their language.
Being in charge of the internationalization of Delicious Library 2, I’m looking to get in contact with the University of Hawaiʻi, my friends in Madagascar, and anyone else I can get to contact me about localizing the application in their language.
I realize that there aren’t a lot of Mac users among the native Hawaiian or Malagasy populations, let alone users of Delicious Library, but that’s not the point. The point is linguistic equality. Malagasy should not be held as a secondary language to French, even if French has more money behind it.
Of course, as with any proposition, there’s the question of what’s in it for me. Why should I as a developer spend my time localizing in a language whose speakers are not my customers, and why should I as a bilingual person localize an application neither I nor anyone I know, actually uses?
Localizers are typically unpaid volunteers, but the hours they put in should be more than compensated for by the service they’ve done their people. Developers are a harder sell, but think of it this way: today the Mac doesn’t have much of a user base among speakers of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, but if most applications on the Mac were localized for ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, that builds a competitive advantage for the platform, which builds a user base for future sales.
It’s also kind of cool.
Addenda 
Random Lemur
You should email this to editor@kaleo.org and have the UHM newspaper do an article about it. It might attract some attention. Imagine: the whole Hawaiian studies department might start using Macs, if there are Hawaiian localizations for everything.
You should email this to editor@kaleo.org and have the UHM newspaper do an article about it. It might attract some attention. Imagine: the whole Hawaiian studies department might start using Macs, if there are Hawaiian localizations for everything.
Dirk Stoop
This post made me check our Sparkle plus stats, just to see which languages our end-users are using as their primary language. I found 3 distinct IP addresses using Malagasy, approx. 0.01%.
Bear in mind that our app is aimed at retail store owners and is a tough sell to people whose native languages we don’t support, because they won’t be able to print invoices etc. in their own language unless they’d edit some HTML first.
Sadly, Hawaiian was not listed in our stats, but that could very well be due to the fact that there’s no ISO 639-1 code for Hawaiian. I’m not sure if Sparkle plus would pick up the ISO 639-2 code or if there are simply no Checkout users/tryers who set Hawaiian as their primary language.
This post made me check our Sparkle plus stats, just to see which languages our end-users are using as their primary language. I found 3 distinct IP addresses using Malagasy, approx. 0.01%.
Bear in mind that our app is aimed at retail store owners and is a tough sell to people whose native languages we don’t support, because they won’t be able to print invoices etc. in their own language unless they’d edit some HTML first.
Sadly, Hawaiian was not listed in our stats, but that could very well be due to the fact that there’s no ISO 639-1 code for Hawaiian. I’m not sure if Sparkle plus would pick up the ISO 639-2 code or if there are simply no Checkout users/tryers who set Hawaiian as their primary language.
The KFS
While it may sound callous, I think it’s better to let endangered languages die so that we can all understand each other. We should standardize on Brainraw. That is, pure thoughts not filtered by speech. You just open your mouth emit Brainraw, and your intentions are met with understanding, regardless of either person’s vocabulary.
While it may sound callous, I think it’s better to let endangered languages die so that we can all understand each other. We should standardize on Brainraw. That is, pure thoughts not filtered by speech. You just open your mouth emit Brainraw, and your intentions are met with understanding, regardless of either person’s vocabulary.
Mike Lee
Sure. Let’s eliminate cuisine in favor of a single nutrient-rich glop. That will save money and time and simplify ordering at restaurants. Let’s go ahead and eliminate art and culture and variety in general. It’s not like variety is the spice of life or anything.
Sure. Let’s eliminate cuisine in favor of a single nutrient-rich glop. That will save money and time and simplify ordering at restaurants. Let’s go ahead and eliminate art and culture and variety in general. It’s not like variety is the spice of life or anything.
Notably, there’s no actual such thing as Brainraw, flying as it does in the face of the physiology of the brain.
Bill
Eh, brah! Hawaiian kine Mac bes kine Mac.
Eh, brah! Hawaiian kine Mac bes kine Mac.
Keola Donaghy
Aloha, I’ve been doing localization of Mac software into Hawaiian and dealing with other issues in the area for about 15 years. I worked with Apple to get the Hawaiian keyboard in Mac OS X, as well as some string localization and sorting routines.
Macintosh is predominantly used by us in the Hawaiian language programs statewide because of the availability of tools and the support we’ve gotten from Apple. Our entire college of Hawaiian Language uses Macs, and last I was there nearly everyone in the Hawaiian language and studies departments were too, but that was some time ago.
I’d be happy to talk to you about localizing Delicious Library. Actually doin git would depend upon the amount of work and the value to our programs. Email me at donaghy (at) hawaii (dot) edu
Aloha, I’ve been doing localization of Mac software into Hawaiian and dealing with other issues in the area for about 15 years. I worked with Apple to get the Hawaiian keyboard in Mac OS X, as well as some string localization and sorting routines.
Macintosh is predominantly used by us in the Hawaiian language programs statewide because of the availability of tools and the support we’ve gotten from Apple. Our entire college of Hawaiian Language uses Macs, and last I was there nearly everyone in the Hawaiian language and studies departments were too, but that was some time ago.
I’d be happy to talk to you about localizing Delicious Library. Actually doin git would depend upon the amount of work and the value to our programs. Email me at donaghy (at) hawaii (dot) edu
Even if you wanted to live your life in Hawaiian, the minute you sit down at your computer, you’re right back to using English.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Localization
