Khmer Software Initiative

All the menus and messages used in the programs must be translated into Khmer, so that everything that a user will see in his computer will be in Khmer language. The basic effort is evaluated on the translation of about 50.000 messages, each one of which can be from a single word to five lines of text. Translations will be done in the order established by the project plan. This module could be separated in several sub-modules, in order to create clear project milestones (the same could be applied to the translation of manuals). The translation of software comes down to translate the messages displayed by the software package. The following number of messages needs to be translated for each one of the applications.

The latest version of the famous Linux distribution, SUSE Linux, was released recently. With the good cooperation between KhmerOS and Novell, finally we were able to make SUSE Linux 10.1 the first Linux distribution that works well with Khmer out of the box. By choosing Khmer as the installation language (yes, you can install in Khmer), you'll get Khmer font, standard Khmer keyboard and many application translated. Some problem still exist though.

22-May-2006: We just committed the latest translation for the next KDE release which is 3.5.3. So far we have translated 44,372 messages which bring Khmer from 48th (in KDE 3.5.2) to 43th rank in the list of KDE translation statistic. A funny thing, we are 4 messages behind Lithuanian which is at 42th rank. If we would know this, we would translate 5 more messages :-) You can see the complete list at http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable/toplist.php.

The localization team of KhmerOS is now trying to test and get detail information about some graphic designing and desktop publishing software such as GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus and Quarkexpress.

We just made some new KDE screenshots in Khmer. They are available at http://l10n.kde.org/teams/infos.php?teamcode=km#screenshots (please cancel the translator list in that page, it's invalid). Those screenshots are taken from the latest version of KDE which is 3.5.2 and here are some information about them:

The latest version of a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux and Unix workstations is released. It is available in 69 languages including Khmer. For Khmer, you'll get almost every program translated that are needed for your daily life such as internet/email, multimedia and entertainment, graphic design... KDE also has its own office application that's Koffice but since OpenOffice is good enough to feed your office and administration works, we did not translate Koffice. More information can be found at http://kde.org/announcements/announce-3.5.2.php.

15-Mar-06: After a two hard-working weeks, we have translated 10,000 messages more for the next KDE 3.5.2 which is probably came out during this month. In total we have translated 33,282 messages which bring Khmer to 48th rank in the list. You can see the list at http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable/toplist.php. Please be noticed that this date is the deadline for KDE 3.5.2 translation so we will not do any big changes to what we have right now. Of cause, we still have to do some correction to make the translation as good as possible for the next KDE release (4.0).

All the menus and messages used in the programs must be translated into Khmer, so that everything that a user will see in his computer will be in Khmer language. The basic effort is evaluated on the translation of about 50.000 messages, each one of which can be from a single word to five lines of text. Translations will be done in the order established by the project plan. This module could be separated in several sub-modules, in order to create clear project milestones (the same could be applied to the translation of manuals). The translation of software comes down to translate the messages displayed by the software package. The following number of messages needs to be translated for each one of the applications.