WINDOWS & SOFTWARE IN THE WELSH LANGUAGE

E

Emlyn Jones

Could you please advice me whether Windows ans software
such as Office are to be had in the Welsh Language. Thank
you.

Emlyn Jones
 
M

MrUser

Emlyn Jones said:
Could you please advice me whether Windows ans software
such as Office are to be had in the Welsh Language. Thank
you.

Emlyn Jones

As Welsh is available for both Linux and OpenOffice, Microsoft deserve to
lose customers if it isn't!
 
D

David

Emlyn

After that stirring performance yesterday against NZ they surely have a duty
to provide it! (Sorry about the final result, but a great game).

David
 
D

David

Emlyn

After that stirring performance yesterday against NZ they surely have a duty
to provide it! (Sorry about the final result, but a great game).

David
 
D

David

Emlyn

After that stirring performance yesterday against NZ they surely have a duty
to provide it! (Sorry about the final result, but a great game).

David
 
D

David

Emlyn

After that stirring performance yesterday against NZ they surely have a duty
to provide it! (Sorry about the final result, but a great game).

David
 
D

David

Sorry everyone about my multiple earlier replies.

It was my mail reader having a twitch - honest guv!

David
 
M

MrUser

Might be worth getting your PC scanned,
There is this thing called the C-Nile Virus, it tends to cause things like
that!
 
M

Mike Williams [MVP]

Emlyn said:
Could you please advice me whether Windows ans software
such as Office are to be had in the Welsh Language. Thank
you.

Both Windows (2000 & XP) and Office (2000 or later) support Welsh editing
but there is no editions with Welsh user interface. There is a downloadable
Welsh spell-checker.

My guess that a Welsh edition of any product is not going to happen any time
soon as the market is too small to sustain the costs of translating
everything into Welsh. The costs for translation tend to be greater for
populations with smaller populations because of the expense of finding those
who have the necessary combination of language and technical skills, and
those costs would have to be amortized over a very small market.
 
D

David

Mike Williams said:
Both Windows (2000 & XP) and Office (2000 or later) support Welsh editing
but there is no editions with Welsh user interface.

Hey, come to think of it, there is no edition with an English (i.e. that we
now have to call a UK English) user interface either!
My guess that a Welsh edition of any product is not going to happen any time
soon as the market is too small to sustain the costs of translating
everything into Welsh.

I think we can understand that economic argument, but a (UK) English version
would be nice! (I know it is not going to happen, though).

We sell our product onto an internaltional market, and as well as providing
user interfaces in many European and non-European languages we also go to
the trouble of making a US English version.

David
 
B

Bob Buckland ?:-\)

Hi Emlyn,

At present there isn't a Welsh edition of MS Office.
The only currently available tool are the Welsh Proofing
tools. If you have Word 2002 you can download that edition's
proofing tools from

http://microsoft.com/downloads/deta...14-1FEB-4CA9-9839-497B806B610E&displaylang=cy


=======
Could you please advice me whether Windows ans software
such as Office are to be had in the Welsh Language. Thank
you.

Emlyn Jones>>
--
I hope this helps you,

Bob Buckland ?:)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

The Office 2003 System parts explained
http://microsoft.com/uk/office/preview/system.asp

MS on 'Why Office System 2003'
http://microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2003/10-13productivity.asp
 
M

Mike Williams [MVP]

David said:
I think we can understand that economic argument, but a (UK) English
version would be nice! (I know it is not going to happen, though).

I don't think Microsoft takes this issue seriously.I've raised it any number
of times with MS folks for over a decade. I know that (here) in Australia
there is frequent press about how schools have to deal with kids getting US
spellings from Microsoft products. I believe the number of people using
non-US spellings outnumbers the u-deprived, but the leap between
comprehension and action on this matter is too big. In Australia, we're just
happy when they don't confuse us with Austria.
 
D

David

Mike

I was in Austria in the summer, and there are T-shirts on sale there bearing
the motif: "There are no kangaroos in Austria". So obviously they also
suffer from this confusion!

David
 
O

Opinicus

Mike Williams said:
I don't think Microsoft takes this issue seriously.I've raised it any
number of times with MS folks for over a decade.

The odd thing is that producing a UK English version would be a very
mechanical affair. Even Word can turn a text written in one flavor of
English into another.
 
M

Mike Williams [MVP]

Opinicus said:
Mike Williams [MVP] <mikew@[removeme]mvps.org> said:
The odd thing is that producing a UK English version would be a very
mechanical affair. Even Word can turn a text written in one flavor of
English into another.

Not entirely true. There are some expressions which reverse meaning when you
cross the Atlantic or whose meaning would have to be deduced from context.
See for example http://www.suslik.org/Humour/National/ukus.html or
http://www.miketodd.net/lexicon/index.htm.

In the Windows case, it would be trivial to handle "Colour", "Network
Neighbourhood" etc with menus, because letters are being added and there is
no effect on accelerator keys. Help topics could also handle regional
variations in terminology easily enough.
 
M

Mike Williams [MVP]

David said:
Mike

I was in Austria in the summer, and there are T-shirts on sale there
bearing the motif: "There are no kangaroos in Austria". So obviously
they also suffer from this confusion!

David

Yes. I've seen those shirts. There was also an instance of MS Bookshelf or
Encarta (I can't remember which but I did see the entry and file a
complaint) making this confusion in the context of World War I.

I wouldn't press the issue of speech recognition for Wales in case you get
something that requires you to intone in very deep groans, squeals and
clicks.
 

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