UNN Students & Staff Help Google Launch Google Search in Igbo

~~Source: http://google-africa.blogspot.com/2009/07/language-lens-for-experiencing-culture.html~~

You can now see www.google.com.ng in Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa languages.

Some students and staff of UNN volunteered to help translate Google search interface from English to Igbo and this was launched early this month. The students and staff who contributed to this have made history.

It was a complete free (not paid) effort. This is very commendable and is worthy of emulation.

The post from that Google blog says:

"These language interfaces, comprising of over 10,000 words, were entirely completed by groups of self organized, motivated volunteers in a very short period of time! What's even more exciting is that these same volunteers have expressed interest in translating more Google products that can make an impact in their communities.

Google would like to extend a special thank you to volunteers from University of Nigeria Nsukka, University of Mauritius, and from Google. In each group, there are two sets of volunteers we are thanking: The first set spent time organizing other volunteers, curating and reviewing translations. These "partner" volunteers took ownership over the quality of the group-aggregated translations and raised the quality & consistency of the interfaces significantly. The second set are equally important - they spent time researching, discussing, translating the text, and encouraging others to join the effort, some even walking several kilometers daily to reach computer terminals!

These volunteer translation efforts demonstrated to me the latent demand for localized content and applications across Sub Saharan Africa. We hope to replicate this for more and more African languages in the coming months - but not without your help!"

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