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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Ubuntu and the Power of Language

  • Written by Christopher Tozzi
  • October 13, 2008

One of the three fundamental principles of the Ubuntu philosophy is the availability of software in a user’s native language, whatever that happens to be. While those of us who grew up speaking one of the world’s top 10 languages might never give linguistic freedom a second thought, this is an area where Ubuntu clearly outperforms its proprietary competitors.

Windows XP SP2, according to Microsoft, supports 43 languages.[1] I’m unable to find reliable figures for Mac OS X or Vista, but I’d be surprised if they’re much better.

Ubuntu 8.04, in contrast, is available in more than 150 translations.[2] Granted, this number hardly represents all of the written languages on the planet, and the translations of many of those which are supported remain quite incomplete.

Moreover, some—like the Latin translation—are not of much conceivable practical use (no offense to those of you trying to relive the Gallic Wars). But the sheer abundance of translations in comparison to proprietary platforms, regardless of their completeness, says volumes about the power of open-source software to overcome traditional inequities inherent to traditional software development.

Language is closely tied to personal and cultural identity. As any good historian will tell you, attempts to impose a foreign language on an unwilling group almost never go as planned. The limited language support on proprietary platforms, and the inability of individuals to contribute language packs of their own, constrain the liberty of many people to operate computers in the linguistic and cultural settings in which they are most comfortable.

I’ve never heard of anyone switching to Ubuntu for linguistic purposes (although I’d be surprised if it’s never happened). I also understand the reasons that make Microsoft and Apple’s support of minority languages impractical—we can’t expect profit-oriented corporations to spend money on translations for markets where it doesn’t make fiscal sense.

On open-source platforms, however, such cold financial calculations are irrelevant. If someone wants to add support for an obscure minority language to Ubuntu, there’s nothing to stop her. This means that Ubuntu, through its openness and the enthusiasm of its users, can embrace linguistic groups and cultures ignored by closed-source platforms, an enormously powerful trait that perhaps deserves more credit than it currently enjoys.

So as Ubuntu’s users and developers pursue the geekier objectives of the Ubuntu project, I hope we’ll also harness its linguistic strengths in the long march towards squashing bug #1.

[1]. Microsoft doesn’t provide a clear number regarding language support. My figure of 43 was derived as follows: “There are 24 localized versions of Windows 2000” + “Windows XP adds 9 new languages to the impressive list of languages supported by Windows 2000” + “Windows XP Service Pack 2 introduces ten additional lanaguages [sic]” = 24 + 9 + 10 = 43.

[2]. Note that each of my figures (43 for Windows and 150+ for Ubuntu) does not count dialects or locales as distinct languages; in other words, e.g. British English and American English are considered to represent only one language.

WorksWithU Contributing Blogger Christopher Tozzi is a PhD student at a major U.S. university. Tozzi has extensive hands-on experience with Ubuntu Server Edition and Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

WorksWithU is updated multiple times per week. Don’t miss a single post. Sign up for our RSS and Twitter feeds (available now) and newsletter (launching January 2009).

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22 comments

  1. Avatar Josh October 14, 2008 @ 10:40 am
    Reply

    To be fair, you can’t compare Windows and Ubuntu on internationalization if you’re using a different standard for both. Even though Ubuntu may list 150 languages, many of those are incomplete. All of the translations for Windows are complete. I’d prefer to see a comparison of complete translations only, and I think Ubuntu would still be ahead.

  2. Avatar Chris October 14, 2008 @ 11:21 am
    Reply

    Josh: good point and thanks for the comment. I would have liked to look more closely at the completeness and accuracy of the various Ubuntu translations, but that of course would have required quite a lot of time to do properly.

    But the larger point is that Ubuntu users have the freedom to add support for whichever languages they choose, instead of having Microsoft or Apple dictate which languages they may use–and freedom I think is especially important when you’re talking about something that has to do not just with computer-geek things like source code, but with culture and identity.

  3. Avatar Vadim P. October 14, 2008 @ 11:29 am
    Reply

    open-source projects definitely win in internalization pretty against pretty much all closed-source programs.

  4. Avatar mocoloco October 14, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
    Reply

    Here’s my understanding of things: there’s a difference between a “localized” version of Windows vs how Microsoft defines a “supported language”. As per the links you provided, there are 24 localized versions of XP; which means all the base OS content is translated. A “supported language” means display and entry of the characters/alphabet for that language are possible. Using this definition MS states an unknown number of languages are “supported” (http://tinyurl.com/3nyuk8). Just read the last line of the section you link to for the 9 new XP languages, which says “This brings the total number of languages supported in Windows XP in excess of 140 languages!”

    Then there’s the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) component, which allows different users to have different localizations, within the base 24. And then there’s the Language Interface Pack (LIP) which partially localizes to 27 additional langauges, some of the main components but not everything (roughly 80%, most notably excluding help and documentation, http://tinyurl.com/33oy6k). So Josh’s comment “All of the translations for Windows are complete” is incorrect. If we do count the LIPs that’s a total of 51 for Windows. However this may or may not include Office, and is hit or miss with any third-party apps.

    In contrast, even if not all 150 of Ubuntu’s languages are past the 80% mark, when I boot an Intrepid beta LiveCD I can choose from 61 languages, with a localized Office Suite, IM client, PDF reader, etc.

  5. Avatar Raul Ruiz October 14, 2008 @ 7:42 pm
    Reply

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/13/wikimedia_goes_ubuntu/

    Please read this story as it talks about “Wikipedia” dropping Red hat Linux for Ubuntu Linux Server LTS. Very interesting read. Maybe you guys can verify this story. It would be a big plus for Ubuntu.

  6. Avatar Joe Panettieri October 14, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
    Reply

    Raul: There is some truth to the story, but it seems as if the press is blowing it a bit out of proportion. Check out the comment attributed to Wikimedia Foundation CTO Brion Vibber at the bottom of this blog entry.

  7. Avatar Raul Ruiz October 15, 2008 @ 3:31 am
    Reply

    Thanks for the reply Joe. I agree with you about the media spinning this a bit to much. However, I am happy that a group like Wikimedia would give Ubuntu server a real go. Hopefully other companies may take a similar plunge in time.
    A “Powered by Ubuntu Logo” at Wikipedia’s website would be a good start. 🙂

  8. Avatar Lance October 15, 2008 @ 4:11 am
    Reply

    Go Ubuntu! Getting back to languages- its very useful to me that Linux supports many languages in one installation. Windows does not. Chinese input in Ubuntu is excellent.

  9. Avatar tracyanne October 15, 2008 @ 9:50 am
    Reply

    Those 150 languages are supported by ALL Linux distributions, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva, Slackware, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, you name it, not just Ubuntu.

    There’s nothing special about Ubuntu here. All Linux distributions compare exactly the same with Windows, on Internationalisation support.

  10. Avatar Dummy00001 October 15, 2008 @ 10:49 am
    Reply

    I’m personally not affected, but language support is not very good in Linux yet. Or better to say, not all applications support all languages equally good. Many LTR (or weirder) languages are still causing problems in Mozilla and FireFox. Receiving error message in your native language is not substitute for something failing due to lacking language support.

    The problem isn’t trivial. e.g. IBM sells special library to handle all the possible quirks of many languages. iTunes on Windows uses the library to guarantee the painless experience to its users around the world.

  11. Avatar devnet October 15, 2008 @ 11:28 am
    Reply

    Gonna have to point you to Tracyanne’s comment…100% correct. Whatever language support is out there is FOR ALL LINUX…in fact, Ubuntu gets its translation from the Gnome project. So if anything is to thank for this, it’s Gnome.

  12. Avatar Joe Panettieri October 15, 2008 @ 11:32 am
    Reply

    Devnet: Per your thoughts and Tracyanne’s comment, Works With U wants to go on the record with a tip of the hat to Gnome.

  13. Avatar RichEd October 15, 2008 @ 11:33 am
    Reply

    Dummy00001

    Well how about contributing some of your own time amp; effort to improve the translations ?

    Volunteers put them together … not people who hold stock options and keys to shiny cars.

  14. Avatar User October 15, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
    Reply

    @Josh
    gt; All of the translations for Windows are complete.
    Ok but this is so, because many commercial programms have their own translation. If you buy a Windows software that is only availible in English, the traslation situation on your desktop is also incomplete.

  15. Avatar Chris October 15, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
    Reply

    Devnet and tracyanne: I didn’t mean to disparage other distributions, and understand that a lot of the translation work (like 99% of everything else in Ubuntu and most other distributions) comes thanks to the hard work of upstream developers (although Ubuntu does have its own translation teams; it doesn’t rely solely on everything being done upstream). But this site is about Ubuntu, after all 🙂

  16. Avatar Drummer October 15, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
    Reply

    Back in the OLD days of Mac OS-9 and earlier, one could RESEDIT the resource files to change the text in nearly all programs. It provided an easy way to convert languages in just about any program. One did not need to know programming or have a complier/assembler/linker skills. For fun, one could even make changes to “standard” dialogs, such as changing “Quit” to “I give up”… or even more colorful phrases. While there are many who don’t long for the old Mac days, it’s little things like this that made us appreciate some of the pre- OS-X capabilities.

  17. Avatar Marshal October 15, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
    Reply

    Overall I would say Ubuntu language support is ok… it’s something that is just really important has to be done right.

    I used windows until about a year ago… and I was shocked at the number of application not supporting unicode…
    I am not going to go in a long debate but just to quote a wikipedia page about a comparison of image viewer in windows

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_image_viewers

    “A large majority of Windows based image viewers do not have Unicode support. Some exceptions that do work with Unicode include ExifPro, FastPictureViewer, Imatch and Ashampoo Photo Commander.” (!!)

    I do believe most Linux apps don’t have a problem with unicode.
    (I know unison don’t support unicode which for a File Synchronizer is just ridiculous IMO but that’s another story)

    Oh and I want to talk about text input or more precisely CJK input. I use japanese input on my computer and really it’s not that great on Ubuntu.
    Sure it’s work and it’s easy to install. Only it’s a shame you have to install extra package to be able to input in KDE apps… it’s still better that some time ago were you had to do some hacks to get it working but still.

    Overall SCIM has quiet a few bug and is just not as good as the windows input system IMO … the windows one has high quality character recognition, explanation about word that have the same reading but different character. The only problem about the windows one is how it handle keyboard layout (you have to hack the registry if you have a non Japanese keyboard and want to use it’s layout when typing in Japanese ! at least in XP)

    The worst bug I have seen (in 7.10 and maybe still current not sure) concerning Japanese input in Ubuntu is one that occur on a standard install with Japanese as main language… If I remember right you can only input Japanese one’s in nautilus and then it’s broken until you close the application.
    So basically renaming file and so on was just plain broken…

  18. Avatar Cillian de Róiste October 15, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
    Reply

    One thing Ubuntu does which is unique among distros is requiring that all translations added through their translation system are licensed under the BSD license, regardless of the license of the upstream project. Naturally, this means that Microsoft, Apple and anyone else will also be able to use anything translated through Launchpad.

  19. Avatar tracyanne October 15, 2008 @ 5:31 pm
    Reply

    quote::But this site is about Ubuntu, after al

    That’s fine and dandy, and I don’t have a problem with people talking about their favourite Linux Distribution, everyone does.

    It’s when that Distribution is talked about, and material published about it, as if it is somehow the Only Linux and the other Linux Distributions don’t exist, that’s when I get just a little tetchy.

    Additionally the Work the Ubuntu translators do is made available to the the upstream translaters, as it should be, as the Ubuntu translaters are bound by the GPL to do so. So there is in fact No translation development in Ubuntu that is not available in any other Linux Distribution.

    Everything important in Ubuntu comes from the same sources as everything important in every other Linux Distribution, and because of the GPL, everything the Ubuntu devs add or change is available to every other Linux Distribution, as is everything the devs of every other distribution add or change.

  20. Avatar Lance October 15, 2008 @ 6:09 pm
    Reply

    I tried Fedora Chinese input and wasn’t happy with it. It was nowhere near as polished as Ubuntu. The fonts also stunk. I am an experienced Linux user who doesn’t want to worry about such things.

  21. Avatar tracyanne October 16, 2008 @ 10:52 pm
    Reply

    the operative is ‘available’, that’s why which distribution does it best changes over time.

  22. Avatar WFTL Bytes! for Oct 15, 2008 -- an election, a talk show, br April 15, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
    Reply

    […] 150 Languages for Ubuntu : http://www.workswithu.com/2008/10/13/ubuntu-and-the-power-of-language/ UK Appeals Court says “Hand over encryption keys” : […]

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