Loneliness of the long-distance linguist. : Local Language Program

Information central.

KieranS — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:24:00 GMT

Just in time for the Vista street date, the Vista International Support Portal is live at www.microsoft.com/globaldev/vista/vistahome.mspx! It contains lots of information about the locales, language packs, LIPs, fonts, and keyboards that we ship, and it makes a handy reference to figure out which languages and regions have support in Vista. You can also visit the portal to find free downloads of several of the internationalization tools that we provide, including the recently updated Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, the LocaleBuilder, the Microsoft Transliteration Utility, and the RC1 version of the Microsoft Phonetic Input Tool. Check it out and let us know what you think!

So I want Windows to support my language. How does that happen, exactly?

KieranS — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:16:00 GMT

One of the disappointing things about the end of a product cycle is that it's too late to add into this version all the cool new customer requests that we get. (Of course, the flip side of this is that one of the great things about new product cycles is that we have lots of cool new customer requests to figure out how to add in the future!)

One type of request that comes from customers throughout the cycle is how they should go about getting support for their language into Windows. The extensibility tools we've been developing for keyboard layouts, locales, and transliteration are the beginning of this story, but people often want to know how they might go about getting on the roadmap for future releases, especially in terms of writing system and localization support.

In the end the single best way to let us know that you are advocating for support is to work with your local Microsoft subsidiaries. By engaging locally, we have a great opportunity to understand local markets and their particular needs and to help people in the region provide us with the technical information that we need to assess a support roadmap. Just a few of the factors we consider:

Is the writing system encoded in Unicode? If not, the first step towards support is working with the Unicode consortium to get the writing system encoded (including all relevant glyphs for your language).
Can we find accurate, reliable locale data? In many parts of the world that are newer to technology, finding consistent information can be a challenge. Locale data here encompass a pretty broad range of stuff:

Generally accepted standards for date/time formatting, calendar information, currency standards, and so on.
Generally accepted encoding of the writing system in the software space. Are there any particular challenges with getting the script to shape or render? Can we provide a font that the majority of speakers will be happy with?
Consistent standards for keyboard layouts and input methods. Is there some layout that users in the region favor? Are there multiple layouts? Does the language require an input method editor?
Consistent sorting behavior. Do literate speakers of the language agree on collation order? Do we have native speakers who can help us encode the sort order correctly?

Does the language have technical terminology? Would a Community Glossary effort help?
What do developers need? What kinds of applications are being developed for the language? Does the language require localization support? Are there other languages in the region that are commonly used?

And that's just a partial list!

Over time I'd like to use this space to address the requirements entailed in each of the above and more, plus let customers know how they can best collect and assemble this information and use our existing tools to provide solutions faster. One area where we've received feedback that we could do better is in clear, agile responses to this kind of request. As we've discussed, our extensibility tools are one part of that story; providing transparent information about the roadmap process is another important piece, and I want to use this space to answer some of the questions that we receive about this.

Lights, camera, action!

KieranS — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 01:44:00 GMT

For everything you ever wanted to know about Windows globalization and localization, or at least for one or two things, you might like to check out this Channel 9 interview. It features Michael Kaplan, whose blog you may know; Jeff Allen, our director of localization services; Alp Turkmen, who is driving our business direction in the Windows international space; Claus Juhl, one of our localization engineers; and me. Michael and I speak about globalization issues, with a heavy focus on the Locale Builder and associated ways that we'd like to open up our infrastructure to accomodate all kinds of community solutions, and we're about 45 minutes in. But don't skip! There's great information throughout.

If you watch, please let us know what you think! And yes -- there are closer to 7,000 languages in the world than 2,000, for those of you playing along at home.

Next stop: Antarctica?

KieranS — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:46:00 GMT

A couple of days ago I posted about the Microsoft Locale Builder. But what about the locales that we're adding new for Vista? A few interesting facts:

When Vista ships, it will include locale support for over 130 languages built in as part of Windows locales.
The built-in writing system support plus the Locale Builder and Keyboard Layout Creator tools will make Windows linguistically accessible for >90% of the world's literate population -- this is over 3.5 billion people!
Windows will ship locales for languages and regions in every continent except Antarctica.
Every locale that Windows ships has linguistically appropriate sorting behavior built in.
We are adding over 60 new locales on top of what we shipped with XP, including new support for customers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
The Local Language Program is producing fully localized versions of Windows Vista for 35 languages, with partial localization support for over 60 more.
Windows locales are now supplementing LCID identifiers with string-based identifiers that will allow developers to use IETF names in addition to LCIDs to retrieve locale data via our APIs. The name-based support makes it easier for users to create custom locales using standard names that everyone in the industry will recognize.
We are working with beta testers for all of the new locales that we have added for Vista in order to ensure that the data we ship are of the highest possible quality.

If you're a beta tester and you're finding problems with your locale support (or with some other aspect of your international support), please let me know.