African Locales: for completion THIS MONTH

The African Network for Localization (ANLoc) is seeking immediate help to create Locales for 100 African languages. You can view a description of the project at http://www.facebook.com/l/;www.it46.se/afrigen

You can help in one of three ways:
-> volunteer to work on a locale yourself (the project will help you every step of the way!)
-> play matchmaker - introduce someone who can volunteer for their language
-> spread the word - pass along this message to your networks, so that we increase the chances of finding volunteers for many different languages

THIS YEAR'S DEADLINE to get new languages into the CLDR (Common Locales Data Repository), the international system used to produce all major software on the planet, is OCTOBER 1. So, we need to connect with people who speak languages from all over Africa. And, we need to complete each locale THIS MONTH.

The full list of languages currently in the project is at http://www.facebook.com/l/;www.it46.se/afrigen/statistics.php . If your favorite language shows any red in any of the bars next to it, please volunteer to help complete the locale!

It's easy to volunteer - just send an email to locales@africanlocalization.net

The interface to build a locale in your favorite African language is available in English, French, and Swahili. Building a locale only takes a couple of hours. Please tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your networks!

A quick, true story - one Friday last month, someone in Nairobi took a couple of minutes to provide an introduction between the Locales project and a colleague of theirs working on the Kreole Morisyen language of Mauritius. A few emails were exchanged, and by Monday the Morisyen locale was 90% finished. By the end of that week, the locale was complete. On October 1, this locale will be submitted to CLDR. By early next year, Morisyen will be forevermore part of the universe of languages available for information technology development.

It just takes one person and a couple of hours to finish a locale for a language, but it takes a lot of villagers on the web to find that one person. Thanks in advance for volunteering, for introducing contacts, and/or for passing along this message!