Language enablement
Abstract
Many of our community languages, especially the new and emerging langauge communities are not supported by existing applications or operating systems. Langauge enablement involves identifying and developing resources to enable the use of unsupported languages with computers and on the internet.
Within the Australian context we are often dependant on language ICT solutions being developed overseas. This creates a barrier for refugee communities where limited ICT development occurs within their home countries. The paper will analyse the current langauge enablement environment as it impacts on communities from Africa and the Union of Myanmar.
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham is the research and development coordinator at Vicnet, a division of the State LIbrary of Victoria.
He is the coordinator of the Open Road project, and technical lead on the MyLanguage portal, a national multilingual web resource location tool.
He specialises in web internationalization issues related to lesser used and minority languages. His research interests include electronic multicultural library services, multilingual public internet access services, and the use of ICT for linguistic and cultural maintennace. Andrew has over ten years of experience working with information technology and community languages.
Don Osborn
Wunna Ko Ko
Wunna Ko Ko is a project leader (volunteer) in Burmese Language loacalisation project of OpenOffice.org. He is also serving as a project leader (volunteer) in Burmese Language localisation project of OpenSUSE, a Linux distribution. He participated in the Myanmar National Corpus development, and recieved his Masters Degree from Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan. He participated in Language Observatory Project while he was studying at Nagaoka University of Technology.