DictionaryForMIDs – Mobile Phone Dictionaries

Mobile technology is used more and more, specially by young people who still study languages. Therefore having a dictionary on their mobile phone can be an interesting point. No books to carry, just having a look at the mobile phone to find the right word. Of course it is interesting also for who travels in a foreign country and just wants to have the basic terminology on board without having to carry a paper version as well as just for anybody interested in a particular language.

There are already plenty of dictionaries for download and more will be added over time. Data comes from various sources, among others from the terminology files used also to create vocabulary trainers for KDE-Education by Vox Humanitatis.

Completion of the dictionary data is needed and is quite relevant to make the dictionary files usable for everyone. Besides that User Interface localization is another relevant goal to reach.

These last two points are the reason why DictionaryForMIDs together with Vox Humanitatis today decided to add the user interface to be localized to the translation marathon taking place in occasion of the International Mother Language Day. The data format is not yet decided and could reach from a simple .txt format which can be translated in the textfile itself or translated with the help of a CAT-Tool to the inclusion on a Pootle server if we find a suitable existing project that will help by integrating the strings to be translated.

The people around DfM are not many and any help is highly appreciated.

Localisation of the User Interface of DictionaryForMids

This year we are trying to help DictionaryForMids to get is User Interface localised and we are also creating contents that can be used with it. All together it's a very interesting project and will be valuable for many many people.

Young people use more and more mobile devices and therefore it is relevant to get Open Source software going as well.

It would be great if you could dedicate some time to help localising the User Interface of DictionaryForMids in your language. The source files count approx. 1100 words, so it is not really much to translate.

The following languages had already been translated and now need an update (that is approx. half of the text is translated):

Chinese, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norsk, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Vietnamese

We would really like to se ANY language, also less resourced languages, to be present in this project.

The project has been prepared for the UI localization with OmegaT (please follow the indications on the OmegaT website to download the latest version). The prepared project can be downloaded from our repository. By clicking on this link, download should start immediately. If you don't want to use OmegaT but any other software: just unzip the file and have a look in the "source" directory. There are two .txt and one .xml files that need translation. For OmegaT users: just open the project. Of course I can also send you the files by e-mail. In any case: please contact me by e-mail at s.eller [at] voxhumanitatis [dot] org and start with the update or translation only after the OK from our side.  This is to avoid double work.

I really hope that we will get many langauges for the UI many of you already know part of the data that soon will be used to create dictionaries. Also that part is online in the download section of our server.

Update 16 February 2009

Localisers:

  • Alemannic: translation: Mireille Libmann
  • Danish: translation: Tine Haurum
  • Hungarian: translation: Karoly Fabricz
  • Spanish: translation: Manuel Mata Pastor
  • Swahili: translation: Arthur Buliva
  • Urdu: translation: Huda Sarfraz

FAQ

Are there Screenshots for the UI?

When is the deadline for the delivery of the project?

  • It would be nice if it was by 21st of February, but any date around it is fine. Not all of us have always time "exactly now" and we allowed us to take from 17 to 25 January (some start even earlier) to do things.

How to deal with the old translations and what to do with wrong parts?

  • Well, you can use the old translations, but this it not a must: you can well decide to use your your way to do things. Obviously errors need to be corrected. One thing to consider is to create a glossary out of your translation once it is finished and put it at disposal to ensure terminology consistency in future.

Will the translations be proofread?

  • Actually this depends from the amount of people that will help. We know there are many projects always asking for help and it could well happen that eventual typos or other errors are only corrected over time.