The Durban Institution of Technology (DIT) Translate-a-thon kicked off on Saturday, with the second annual mass event to translate up to 30 000 computer software words into Zulu.
Forty people, including lecturers, students and the South African Translation Institution, committed to the development of indigenous languages in the English dominated field of IT, volunteered their time to take part.
"On Saturday we were only able to translate about 30 000 words compared to last year`s 40 000 words, largely because we had to explain to people what we were doing," says Mandy Njobe, DIT IT department lecturer.
Njobe says the DIT is involved in the ongoing community-based project because it wants to help rural people who either don`t speak English or want to use computers in their mother tongue.
"It was quite interesting to try out writing proper Zulu, consulting Zulu dictionaries and asking translators. It made me appreciate the need for the expertise of translators in the IT industry where previously technologically disadvantaged people are involved," says Njobe.
She says the organisation finished translating FireFox, an open source Internet browser. Next month it will look at translating other software packages into Zulu.
"Everyone was very proud and excited to be involved in the first and second Translate-a-thon. The students are passionate about their language and even though a lot of work is still to come, we accomplished a lot," says Njobe.
The Translator-a-thon is part of www.translate.org.za, a South African non-governmental software translation project that has translated computer software packages into a number of South African languages, including Afrikaans, Northern Sotho, Tswana, Pedi and Venda.
The Translate-a-thon is sponsored by the Shuttleworth Foundation, the Department of Communications, the CSIR, Obsidian Systems, HP South Africa and St James Software.
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