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Emil ASANOV<br />

Director, VectorSoft Company<br />

(Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)<br />

Localization of Free Software as a Means to Support<br />

Multilingualism and Information Literacy Development<br />

of the Population of Kyrgyzstan<br />

Localization is normally understood as both the process and the output of<br />

translation from one natural language (the source language) into another (the<br />

target language) of the software product interface and/or help system, as well<br />

as its messages. As far as Russian is concerned, such terms as “Russification”<br />

and “Russifier” are widely used to mean localization. RuNet has a great variety<br />

of sites dealing with software Russification.<br />

This report looks into the issue of the Kyrgyz translation (i.e. the Kyrgyz<br />

localization) of the most well-known and widespread free software products:<br />

OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox. The former is a worthy rival of the Microsoft<br />

Corporation’s MS Office software suite, and the latter is a successful competitor<br />

of Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser.<br />

In Kyrgyzstan, like in all the other CIS countries, the Windows Operating<br />

System is the most widespread and comfortable user environment. Many people<br />

have no idea that other similar systems exist; though users of smartphones are<br />

also familiar with Android OS.<br />

Our survey has revealed that most Windows users believe the Mozilla Firefox<br />

browser to be a Windows OS application, and are completely unaware of<br />

its cross-platform nature. And vice versa, the OpenOffice suite is steadily<br />

associated with the Linux Operating System, though it is cross-platform<br />

similarly to Firefox.<br />

So why were Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice, of all, chosen for localization The<br />

main pro is that both software products are distributed under free, non-commercial<br />

licenses; moreover, it is possible to use (optionally) their source codes.<br />

Localization of the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser<br />

The first Mozilla Firefox localization (of version 1.0.3) financed through the<br />

grant of the Soros Foundation – Kyrgyzstan, appeared in February, 2005. But<br />

due to the lack of understanding of problems and their solutions throughout<br />

the working process, the localization product became highly outdated by<br />

the time of issue; and localization updating is one of the key elements in the<br />

comprehensive approach. The work was probably discontinued because of<br />

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