Dbailey 

The South African National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) recently published a document (pdf version) with far reaching recommendations about open source and open standards.
The paper contains a narrative on the South African translation project translate.org.za which is translating KDE into all 11 official languages of South Africa. "KDE itself is sensitive to language issues and is currently translated into 42 languages, far in excess of any of the popular commercial packages. It took Translate six weeks of work to translate enough of KDE into Xhosa to make it ready for release. Another six weeks were spent for other minor components and documentation. It was so easy to include Xhosa in KDE because there is a spirit of co-operation and collaboration in open software projects. As a result it enjoys some of the richest translation tools and is multi-lingual from the ground up. Information is freely discussed and shared, which means that KDE, like most other open software, is rapidly being enhanced by thousands of volunteer programmers around the world." Read More

Translate.org.za (partly sponsored by Obsidian Systems) is spearheading an effort to translate KDE -- the complete desktop including Konqueror, KMail, KWord, KSpread -- into the eleven official languages of South Africa. As a first start, the Xhosa translation is already part of KDE 2.2.1. The Mail & Guardian newspaper has a full article on the project. Read More