|
Kiswahili for
Microsoft Windows by end of
2004 Several months
after the African Union decided to include
Kiswahili among its official languages,
the software giant has announced plans to
translate its Office software into
Kiswahili to cater for the growing number
of computer users in Africa. "We are focussed on
Kiswahili because it's a language of
choice in the East African region,"
Patrick Opiyo of Microsoft East Africa
told reporters Wednesday in Nairobi,
Kenya. He predicted the
rollout of Kiswahili Microsoft products in
six months. He said Kiswahili
would be added in a global local languages
programme in response to worldwide
complaints that youngsters were losing
their native tongues. Microsoft
programmes already run in 40 languages
including English, Chinese, Arabic and
Spanish. The company argues
that in a region with few computer users
and high illiteracy rates, the Kiswahili
version of Windows will inspire East
African governments to expand their IT
economies, encourage literacy campaigns
and attract more computer
users. There are 100
million Kiswahili-speakers in the region -
in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and parts of
the Horn of Africa, Great Lakes, Malawi,
Mozambique and the Indian Ocean
islands. The other big
linguistic groups to benefit from the
expansion in Africa will be Hausa and
Yoruba in West Africa and Amharic and
Somali in the Horn of Africa, Opiyo
said. It means computer
users in parts of Africa and the Diaspora
will soon be able to point and click, and
operate the world's most used office
software in their own native languages on
their computers. Source: Pan African
News Agency This
site is sponsored by the |
|||||||||||||
