Some time ago we had a discussion of whether speakers of minority languages have much interest in the localization of computer software. I just encountered an interesting datapoint while checking out Freshmeat, a catalogue of Unix and cross-platform software whose front page contains announcements of new releases. One program on today's front page is version 0.0.16 of the GNU Generic Security Service Library. Here's the blurb:
Generic Security Service (GSS) is an implementation of the Generic Security Service API (GSSAPI). It is used by network applications to provide security services, such as authenticating SMTP/IMAP, via the GSSAPI SASL mechanism. It consists of a library and a manual, and a Kerberos 5 mechanism that supports mutual authentication and the DES and 3DES ciphers.
The first of the changes announced today is:
A Kinyarwanda translation has been added.
I don't know who did the Kinyarwanda translation or why, but somebody evidently sees a need for a Kinyarwanda translation of a fairly technical piece of software that will be used only by programmers.
Posted by Bill Poser at August 12, 2005 01:40 AM