Oromo, a language of Ethiopia with about 9,000,000 speakers, now joins languages like Mandarin, English and Spanish — languages with hundreds of millions of speakers — (and yes, Elmer Fudd-speak and Klingon) as the newest addition to Google’s multilingual interface. This translation effort was made possible by over four years of work by dedicated volunteers using the “Google in Your Language” program.
According to Qeerransoo Biyyaa, one of the Afaan Oromoo translation team members, the translation effort “was a huge struggle as a person needs to integrate concepts from technology, language and culture simultaneously. It was sometimes hard to find equivalent technological terms in Oromo or other language from Ethiopia. This is simply because technological terms are as foreign as the technologies themselves to Ethiopia.”
Bravo! What’s next? Maybe the Afaan Oromoo Wikipedia …
