Operating systems usually in English are now available in Nepal.

Software localization is not just for computer games anymore! Localization not only involves translating words, but it really enables people of different languages and cultures to understand and identify with a message, product, images, and icons familiar to them. The following excerpt relates an important example of localization: bringing computer technology to the masses.

“An archive in Nepal that was struggling to electronically catalogue its books has devised a computer operating system that works fairly well in the Nepali language with its Unicode compatible fonts. Bal Krishna Bal of the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) – the Patan Dhoka (Kathmandu)-based principal archive of books and periodicals in Nepali – says that four years ago the institution was at a loss on how to catalog its collection.

With the development of the keyboard drivers (software), Nepali typing has become drastically simple to learn. The development of the Unicode compatible fonts has made data processing possible for the Nepali language. But this was just the beginning, says Bal, currently the project manager of the PAN Localization Project at the MPP.

Owing to the fact that the Nepali population at large has been deprived of using computers because of the language barrier, with English being the communicating language of the computers, MPP set the objectives of developing an operating system and localized software applications in Nepali,’ says Bal. MPP contributed the Nepal component and released the localized operating system NepaLinux 1.0 late last year.”

Excerpt from: IANS Press Release, Kathmandu, June 28, 2006

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