20101113
africanews

Chichewa becomes one of the few African languages that have been used to localise the popular English Google version. Gmail, Google Maps and Google are now being enjoyed in Malawi's national local language.

The development, which will see a majority Chewa speaking people click their way to searched information in the country, neighbouring Zambia, Mozambique, and the language users in Zimbabwe, follows an advertisement from Google Africa.

Lilongwe-based software developer, Edmond Kachale, started the translation programme as a pastime, writes Clement Nyirenda in his blog. He further went on to call for volunteers to carry out the work.

"Google Africa is looking for volunteers who are passionate about Chichewa and would like to participate in the translation of Google products to Chichewa, starting with the Google web search interface. If you are interested, please give me a shout," he called.

"But there is a need for more people. More than 1,950 strings have to be translated for the search interface. There are issues of terminology standardization to be considered," he said.

George Kayange, executive director of Child Rights Information & Documentation Centre (CRIDOC), said a team of dedicated Malawian volunteers worked tirelessly translating Google web tools to Chichewa since January this year.

Google homepages for Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are now running live in Chichewa.

The Mozambique homepage is defaulted to Portuguese while the other three homepages are defaulted to English. Links that take you to the Chichewa (Chinyanja) interface appear below the search box.

"As is usually the case with new systems, there are some typos and orthographical errors. The review team, of which I am a member, is taking care of them," adds Nyirenda.

He is positive that users will help the review team by sending constructive suggestions and opinions.

Google is focusing on making the internet more relevant and useful to Africans by creating more African content online; raising awareness among consumers and businesses about the opportunities offered by the internet; and developing products that are locally meaningful.