 InfoTech
in Swahili
by Duncan Drury
There are a number of barriers that keep
people away from the benefits of information technology. Not being able to
afford a computer, or get access to one for example. However, during my stay in
Arusha I have found that the number of people with email addresses suggests a
wide range of people can scrape together enough money to visit an internet café
every fortnight or so. People who see the benefits of being online can usually
find the money required. A more fundamental barrier perhaps is that of language.
The language of IT is often hard to understand, with all its jargon and strange
conventions that those in the know just take for granted. Being faced with a
computer for the first time is a confusing experience. The keyboard isn’t laid
out ABC style, but a funny QWERTYUIOP – where is the letter A? What is that
thing next to the keyboard other people in here are fiddling with all the time?
What? A mouse? Get me out of here!
Once those stumbling blocks are passed, you
will start looking at the screen. File Edit View Favorites – what are these?
Confused? Well, imagine if you didn’t speak English.
The language of IT and the internet is mainly
English. Web sites are predominantly in English. Software often comes in a
variety of languages, unfortunately Swahili is rarely included.
A number of popular web sites are
available in Swahili. Many of these are from international broadcasters who have
Swahili language radio programmes, for example:
· BBC World
Service –
www.bbc.co.uk/swahili
· Voice of America -
www.voanews.com/swahili
· DW-World -
www.dwelle.de/kiswahili
· NHK (Japanese Radio) –
www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/swahili
The links on
www.swahilinews.com pull together the latest content from many of these
sites - although on first glance it looks like this site is in English, scroll
down for headlines in Swahili.
There are also a number of Tanzanian sites that are mainly in
Swahili
·
www.darhotwire.com – probably the
most technically advanced site in Tanzania – chat, news, forums they have it
all.
·
www.ippmedia.com – publishers of a
number of Tanzanian newspapers.
·
www.itv.co.tz - Swahili TV online.
Fortunately, the most popular and useful search engine, Google
is available in Swahili. If you aren’t seeing Google in Swahili when you use it,
click on the Language Settings link, and select Swahili from the list of
languages under "Use the Google Interface in Your Language." This does not limit
the sites that appear in your search to Swahili, but may make you feel more at
home when using the search engine.
The open source directory, DMOZ has a Swahili section at
www.dmoz.org/World/Kiswahili
with Swahili sites.
One of the best sites about Swahili is the Kamusi
Project – www.yale.edu/swahili.
This site includes an online dictionary, translation tools. Unfortunately, the
Living Swahili Dictionary seems to be broken at present.
Getting Swahili Represented Online
Swahili web sites and software at present do
not represent the number of Swahili speakers using computers or the internet, or
those who will be in the near future. What can be done to change this? There are
a few things you can do as computer users or providers of IT services to help
buck this trend:
· Browsers can be
set to automatically select Swahili versions of web pages – in Internet Explorer
go to Tools, select Options then click on the Languages button. In the window
that pops up select "Swahili [sw]". This will not necessarily make a noticeable
difference, but site providers will see that people are looking for Swahili
versions of their site, and may in time respond. If Swahili is listed at the top
of the language list here, Google will automatically display its Swahili
version.
· If your web
site has pages in Swahili say so! In your HTML add the line <meta
http-equiv="Content-Language" Content="sw"/> in your head tag. This will allow
search engines to see your site is in Swahili. In the future this may allow
filtering in search engines.
· Register
Swahili sites you know about on DMOZ at the link above using the Add URL link.
· Well designed
software is easily translated. Get involved with projects to translate open
source software and web sites into Swahili. A project exists to translate the
GNOME Linux desktop into Swahili – see
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/ for more details. The Mozilla browser
is also being translated – see www.juasun.net
and the pages on Juamozilla for details. Such projects can only succeed when
many people get involved. If you speak English and Swahili, you could be
volunteering on these projects!
As things stand IT is dominated by English,
but this is a downward trend with only 52% of web pages being in English in
2001. More and more languages are being represented online meaning greater
access to more people. The language barriers are coming down!
If you know of any useful web sites or
programmes in Swahili send them to me at
duncandrury@yahoo.co.uk
Competition
Want to win a 32Mb data key. Write an essay predicting what
Arusha will be like in 10 years time, and send it to me before March 15. The
most imaginative entry wins!
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