OLPC
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One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a project intending to distribute small laptop computers to children in schools. The project was begun at the MIT Media Lab under the leadership of Nicholas Negroponte, and continues in a separate non-profit.
The OLPC laptop is now formally called the "OLPC XO" (it was in the past referred to as the "$100 laptop" since that was the original design goal). Since it is intended for distribution in many countries of the world, multilingual support and localised interfaces and content are important facets of the OLPC project.
Website: http://laptop.org/
Wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/
Languages
Note that the project is taking account of several African languages. The following have localisation projects on the Sugar Labs translation platform at http://translate.sugarlabs.org/ :
Afrikaans, Akan, Amharic, Arabic, Fulah, Hausa, Igbo, Malagasy, Songhai languages, Sotho, Swahili, Wolof, Yoruba, and Zulu.
The OLPC wiki has pages on the following African languages (list is slightly different than the above, some pages are stubs):
- Afrikaans http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Afrikaans
- Amharic http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Amharic_language
- Arabic http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Arabic_language
- Hausa http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hausa_language
- Igbo http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Igbo_language
- Kinyarwanda http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Kinyarwanda_language
- Ndebele http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ndebele
- Northern Sotho http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Northern_Sotho
- Somali http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Somali
- Sotho http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sotho
- Swahili http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Swahili
- Swati http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Swati
- Tsonga http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tsonga
- Tswana http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tswana
- Venda http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Venda
- Xhosa http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Xhosa
- Yoruba http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Yoruba_language
- Zulu http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Zulu
Localisation issues
Keyboards
OLPC's plans in the 2000s to introduce laptops into several countries raised issues of localised content and interfaces. Amharic, which has a syllabic script, is supported using a SCIM IME. There are keyboard layouts and SCIM IMEs included on the XO for all modern writing systems except Mongolian. For the main languages of countries receiving the laptops, the keyboard files have been modified to handle the XO keyboard's key arrangement. Dvorak keyboards are provided for several languages, and also the left-handed and right-handed Dvorak keyboards. These one-handed keyboards are important for amputees, and also useful for those wtho like to type with one hand and mouse with the other.
Languages of Nigeria and neighboring countries of West Africa whose orthographies include extended characters are fully supported. XOs made for students speaking a language other than English will have a keyboard layout switching key, and keytops printed in the local writing system and Latin alphabet.
Discussions were ongoing as of 2007/11 and can be accessed here (need update):
- General page http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Keyboard_layouts
- Nigeria and West Africa:
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Nigeria_Keyboard (this version has apparently been superseded by the below)
(revised version, based on a design proposed several years ago by SIL)
- Ethiopia (including Amharic) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Ethiopia_Keyboard
- One unofficial discussion of some issues, particularly about the West African versions beginning 2007/10/27 at http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/a12n-collaboration/ (not currently accessible)
Translation of interface
OLPC is using Pootle to localise the interface for the XO laptop. See the localisation work page at the Sugar Labs translation platform: http://translate.sugarlabs.org/
See also:
OLPC lists
OLPC runs several mailing lists indexed at http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/ . Some of those with specific relevance to localisation and/or Africa are:
- Devel -- Software development mailing list http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
- Localization -- Localization mailing list http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization
- Library-- OLPC library and content discussions http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library
- Nigeria-opensource -- ''Discussion of open source in Nigeria http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/nigeria-opensource
- Olpc-za -- OLPC South Africa Interest Group http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-za
Other references & links
- Wikipedia
- AR "محمول لكل طفل" https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/محمول لكل طفل
- EN
- "One Laptop per Child" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
- "OLPC XO" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO
- FR
- "One Laptop per Child" http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
- "XO-1" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/XO-1
- PT
- "One Laptop per Child" https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
- "XO-1" https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/XO-1
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