Microsoft Plans to Create Local Language Software

zensufi writes "CNET News has a story stating that Microsoft has announced plans for a program to help governments produce local language versions of key Microsoft applications, giving the software giant a hedge against a growing international threat from open-source software." The piece explains: 'The Local Language Program will provide local and regional governments with "language interface packs" that government and academic developers can use to produce localized versions of the Windows XP operating system and Office 2003 productivity package.'

Comments

Freeloading

[chrispyman]

So Microsoft is giving us the priviledge of letting us translate their products for them. For some reason I don't think this will work well commercial product. You paid for it, why should you work more? Obviously for open source, it's diffrent.

What Gall

[bstadil]

that government and academic developers can use to produce localized versions of the [snip] Office 2003 productivity package

For $400 a pop you would have thought they could have done this themselves.

Re:What Gall

[GMFTatsujin]

Er... as an employee of an academic institution, I really must protest.

First, you're an insensitive clod.

Second, the money that we get comes from a mix of payments made by students and funded legislated by the state. Neither of those sources are eager to part with their cash, and in order to earn it, the institution has to provide value.

Part of proviing value in our case is delivering the maximum service for the smallest outlay of cash. In other words, you're damn skippy we have to pinch our pennies, often to the point of under-funding projects, begging for grant money, and underpaying the staff and faculty. This we do in the name of providing a higher education, because there's no money to be made here. Only reputations.

The trick is to pinch the pennies in ways that appear extravegant and bold, to "show" that we're a competitive, forward-thinking institution with the future in mind.

Uhhh, how is this news?

[still_sick]

The MUI (Multi-Language User Interface) Pack has beena available for the US-English version of Windows for years.

Localized versions of Windows have been available for years as well.

Now they DARE to Localize Applications?! THOSE BASTARDS!!!

Re:Uhhh, how is this news?

[HalfFlat]

So ah, tell me. How do I convince my Japanese version of Windows XP Home to display OS messages in English?

The last time I tried to search for an answer, the only one I found was: buy an English version, back-up everything, install English version, restore from backup. This is a far cry from setting your LANG envvar.

While I'm at it, I can complain that under this version of the OS, a whole bunch of English-language software seems to have uglified small fonts, sometimes to the point of illegibility.

Oh, and how do you enter full-width katakana from the command prompt? It seems impossible. Which makes entering the localized name of the Local Area Connection tricky in netsh. (As far as I can tell, you have to cut and paste the name.)

Not to mention the way that the IME taskbar widget regularly gets obscured by other taskbar widgets making changing input settings a pain in the neck. Microsoft's own deskswitcher application is a particular offender in this regard.

Sure it has localization, but it doesn't appear to be especially well thought out (infamously bad translations aside), and certainly its internationalization quality leaves something to be desired.

Credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

Give them some credit where it is due. Microsoft has always pushed multi language support at every level long before OSS was a serious contender. All their OS API's support unicode, multi language versions of their OS's and many applications have been around a long time.

Linux forced it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft didn't even want to support Icelandic,
in spite of the government wanting to fund the
whole project.

Now, with Linux supporting all sorts of weird
stuff like Welsh and a zillion Indian languages,
Microsoft is losing out in places. All those
little annoying-to-support markets add up.

Re:Linux forced it.

[donutello]

No. South Asian Indians are called that because the civilization was based around the Indus river valley. That is also the root for the word Hindu.

Native Americans/Indians were called Indians because the purpose of Columbus's excursion was to discover an alternate route to India. When they got here they realized it wasn't India but decided to call it the West Indies anyway. They also realized the people here weren't Indians but called them Red Indians.

Is MS 'Seeing th Light'?

[femto]

It almost sounds like the begginings of a 'bazaar' development model (albeit a miniscule step in that direction).

So, what license is to be used for these translations, written by third parties? Will Microsoft try and demand ownership, or at least commandeer a right to unlimited use of the translation?

If it is legally possible, it would be a really interesting experiment to write a translation and release it under the GPL, then sit back and watch the reaction.

Aren't they just outsourcing

[Stevyn]

This sounds to me like they're just outsourcing the task of translating their software to different languages to other small countries that wouldn't make it financially worth it for microsoft to do it.

Isn't that backward?

[YouHaveSnail]

Microsoft has announced plans for a program to help governments produce local language versions of key Microsoft applications

Shouldn't that be the other way around? Why should governments be doing Microsoft's work? If Microsoft wants to sell in upper Mongolia, it ought to make the effort to localize its own damn software for that market.

If you ask me, this is just one more example of Microsoft's incredible hubris.

Re:Isn't that backward?

[bomblaster]

Just another example of twisted OSS thinking.

MS is going about it in a brilliant strategic way. They realize that it is not financially worthwhile for them to do it themselves. Instead they are getting the help of user who might want to use their product.
Right now upper Mongolia doesnt have a customised version of Linux or Windows. There is nothing to stop Upper Mongolia from creating a language pack for KDE. What MS has done is to provide an alternative to that, maybe at a lower cost.

Re:Wow translating their software to other languag

[DaHat]

There is nothing monopolistic about making your product available to as many people/organizations/governments that you can.

Where I come from... we call this competition! You know, where different organizations tailor their products to a given market and duke it out to see who succeeds.

How many new security holes?

[jenkin sear]

How many new buffer overflows will all these previously fixed-length strings introduce? A zillion?

Please help us increase our profits!

[Starky]

I can understand the spirit of community service that inspires people to volunteer their time and resources to open source localization projects.

But here we have a company with over $60 billion in the bank, pulling in more than $1 billion per month in pure profits, raking in unheard of profit margins on their products, and they are asking local and regional governments to provide them with gratis localization services.

Shameful.

Why doesn't Microsoft pay for it?

[Michael B. Davis]

Hi,

With all their billions in the bank, why can't they just pay for the translations? I can't believe that a government would spend resources doing translation work for Microsoft.

Of course, M$ is going to try to get away with not having to pay for it. But I doubt governments (and of course just those of relatively low-population countries) will want to assist funding for them, seeing as how they have such a huge war chest.

I feel confident that gov's will prefer to fund translation on Linux, and M$ will be forced to pay for the their own translation anyway, if they want to get into the market.

Re:open source challenges??

[davegust]

Yea, and in typical volunteer FOSS fashion, of the 79 language teams, 11 have done enough work to be considered useful. Chinese and Japanese, the two most important, are only half translated.

You can bet the 35 Office XP localizations are a bit more polished. That's what profit can do for you.

Re:Just translating may not be enough...

[soullessbastard]

I think they are well aware of what it takes.

Just because they're aware doesn't necessarily mean they take their own knowlege into account. Does Messenger support vertical text for Japanese (or AIM, or iChat for that matter...I honestly don't know)? Is the user interface assumed for these apps even usable for vertical text input and display? I know my IM text input line is at the bottom of the chat window and near assumes top to bottom text ordering.

It's easy for programmers who know no language aside from English or a Romance language to make these fundamental assumptions about language orientation. Nothing aside from changing the code or design of the program is going to help.

Mozilla still doesn't support the standard

At least Mozilla provides concerned governments or localization teams the source code to the program so they can try to fix the problem. The potential for full localization is present in OSS apps even if not yet fully realized.

ed