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Minority languages
小眾語言
Cookies, caches and cows
終端數據，緩存，奶牛
Translating technological terms throws up some peculiar challenges
科學術語翻譯中的難題
Speaking the customer's language
讓手機語言本土化
OUSMANE sweats under a tin roof as he thumbs through a Chinese smartphone that he is selling at the technology market in Bamako, Mali. Words in French, Mali's official language, scroll down the screen. “A ka nyi?” (Is it good?) a customer asks him in Bambara, Mali's most widely used tongue.
巴馬科馬里的科技市場里，熾熱的錫皮屋檐下的奧斯曼手中拿著銷售的中國制造的智能手機。馬里的官方語言是法語，手機屏幕上也是滿滿的法文。一個顧客用馬里大部分人使用的曼丁哥語問“手機怎么樣？”
Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, an open-source web browser, wants Ousmane's customers to have the option of a device that speaks their language. Smartphones with its operating system (OS) are already on sale in 24 countries, including Bangladesh, India and Mexico, for as little as 33. Other countries will be added as it makes more deals with handset manufacturers. And Bambara is one of dozens of languages into which volunteer “localisers” are translating the OS.
火狐（開源網絡瀏覽器）制造商謀智公司致力于讓奧斯曼的顧客中的手機顯示本土語言。現在已經有24個國家在銷售該公司開發的操作系統，包括孟加拉國，印度，墨西哥。與更多手機制造商達成協議后，更多國家會銷售其操作系統。致力于“本土化”的志愿者正在把該系統翻譯成各種語言，曼丁哥語也在其中。
Mozilla has 230 localisation teams, says Jeff Beatty, who co-ordinates some from his office in Utah. Their work takes both time and ingenuity. Firefox for a computer uses about 40,000 words; for the phone OS, 16,000. Translators must express technological terms in languages shaped by livestock, farming and fishing, and choose alternatives for culture-specific words such as “cookie”, “file” and “mouse”.
Jeff Beatty說謀智公司在各地有230個隊伍。他們與猶他州的辦公室的一些人員進行協作。這項工作既消耗時間又耗腦力。電腦版的火狐瀏覽器包含四萬用詞；手機客戶端包含一萬六千詞。翻譯人員需要表達農林業，畜牧業，捕魚業產出的技術詞匯。并且在遇到具體文化相關用詞如“密碼緩存”，“文件”和“鼠標”選擇同義詞。
Ibrahima Sarr, a Senegalese coder, led the translation of Firefox into Fulah, which is spoken by 20m people from Senegal to Nigeria. “Crash” became hookii (a cow falling over but not dying); “timeout” became a honaama (your fish has got away). “Aspect ratio” became jeendondiral, a rebuke from elders when a fishing net is wrongly woven. In Malawi's Chichewa language, which has 10m speakers, “cached pages” became mfutso wa tsamba, or bits of leftover food. The windowless houses of the 440,000 speakers of Zapotec, a family of indigenous languages in Mexico, meant that computer “windows” became “eyes”.
Ibrahima Sarr，塞內加爾程序員，領導火狐富拉語翻譯項目。從塞內加爾到尼日利亞，有2千萬人使用富拉語。翻譯中，“碰撞”變成了“絆倒的牛，但是沒有死”。“超時”變成“你的魚逃走了”。“長寬比”是指因為織錯了捕魚網而受到的老人的責備。馬維拉共和國的齊切瓦語，有1000萬人使用。其中“緩存頁面”翻譯成了“剩余的少量食物”。墨西哥本土語種巴薩特克語有44萬人使用，由于他們的房屋沒有窗戶，因此電腦“界面”譯成了“眼睛”。
The world speaks nearly 7,000 languages. Mali, with a population of 15m, has 13 national languages and 40-60 smaller ones, depending on where the border between language and dialect is drawn. Firefox is available in 90 languages, which serve almost all of the 40% of the global population already online. Apple's most recent computer OS offers 33 languages out of the box, and the new iPhone, 35. Google offers 150, including dialects (and some spurious ones such as “Pirate”). But some languages spoken by millions are excluded, including Tibetan (3m-4m speakers) and Bambara (10m, including those for whom it is a second tongue). Bringing the rest of the world online is not just a technical challenge, but a linguistic one.
全球總共有近7種語言。馬里是一個人口1500萬的國家，卻有13種民族語言，40-60種小語言，此語言的數量取決于語言和方言的界限是如何劃分的。火狐瀏覽器有90個語言版本，供近全球40%網民使用。蘋果最新的電腦系統開發了33種新語言。新的蘋果手機是35種語言。谷歌提供了包括方言在內的150種語言（還有一些虛構的語言比如海盜語言）。然而像藏語（300萬到400萬人使用），曼丁哥語（1千萬人使用）被百萬人口使用的一些語言卻不在其中。讓世界的每一個人都使用網絡技術并不是唯一的難題，語言也是一個挑戰。
As a non-profit, Mozilla can put effort into languages that offer no prospect of a quick return. Songhai and Fulah, recently made available in Firefox, are spoken mainly by poor, illiterate herders and farmers in the Sahel, who do not have smartphones. But when such people eventually get online, they will benefit more if they can do so in their own tongues.
謀智公司在語言上的努力是公益的，眼下并不能馬上獲得收益。火狐上增添了撒哈拉語和富拉赫語。這兩種語言的使用者大部分是賽赫勒地區沒有受過教育的農夫和牧民，他們沒有智能手機。但是，當這些人有一天能上網時，發現可以使用本土語言，必然會從中受益匪淺。
As more languages are added, the Firefox OS will create a sort of global Rosetta stone. It uses all parts of speech, and older, colourful words are pressed into service. Mozilla has created a statistical tool for linguistic analyses. And though 40,000 words is not a whole vocabulary, it is a significant part. As well as bringing the linguistically excluded online, localisation may keep small languages alive.
隨著語言的增加，火狐系統會成為一種“如師通”語言軟件。它把各種詞語，悠久的，豐富多彩的語言應用于一種服務中。謀智公司開發了數據工具來分析語言。雖然4萬詞只是語言中的一角，但是是極其重要的。這不僅為網絡增加了新的語言版本，本土化也使一些小語種存活下來。翻譯：劉苗苗
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