E.g., Ubuntu probably has the *worst* Dutch translation of all Linux distros, due to bugs in Rosetta (including one that reverts all fixes to old, faulty translations), and worsened by a lack of QA tools. I know that those bugs and deficiencies are being worked on, but until they are fixed (we were promised a release last week, but nothing happened…), most of us aren’t really motivated to do any translation work anymore.

Actually, most people tell me that “Rosetta sucks”, and, given the facts, I currently can’t but agree with them…

I once translated Psi instant messaging completely to spanish for my parents. Fortunately there were no rules about gathering >1M people interested in that particular translation

Not everything must be measured by “offer and demand” and the capitalistic approach to markets.

handicap accessibility is important for other arenas. For example, many corporate and governmental organizations require software they purchase, must be adaptable to the needs of handicapped users. For the blind, this means the screen readers must work. For the profoundly handicapped, they must be able to use a variety of keyboard alternatives. And for those with upper extremity disorders, they must work with speech recognition.

given enough time and energy, the needs of vision impaired users and profoundly disabled users can be accommodated. Windows makes it much easier but Linux doesn’t make it impossible. Unfortunately, today upper extremity disabilities are not supported at all in Linux. You have no choice but to use Windows and the ability to bridge from Windows speech recognition to Linux is exceedingly poor. One could even say Linux makes it impossible.

It’s highly unlikely that Linux will ever have native speech recognition. Tens of millions of dollars and years of development time not to mention legal time to avoid the patent minefields are not likely to be available. Even speech recognition using wine is low probability. There are too many issues surrounding the speech recognition side of handicap accessibility to make it happen on volunteer efforts.

I think the best solution will be based on mixed Windows/Linux virtualization solution. This solution makes it possible for handicapped users and organizations supporting them to come up with the best environment based on the user’s needs and wishes without artificial constraints. The end user would be able to choose between nuance or Microsoft speech recognition. The missing component is a bridge allowing you to drive Linux gui environments from Windows.

Unfortunately, I consider this also low probability effort. Not just because it’s technically difficult but because a disability with chronic pain saps your energy and your sensibility tools strain other parts of your body. After work, all you want to do is rest your throat, your hands, and your mind. unless we can find developers with hands and a willingness to learn how to make a good interface from the people that need it, support for upper extremity disabilities will be a long time coming.

Which is why I ask you, in thinking about additional support for languages, also think about additional support for disabled users because we are your future.

—eric

Obligatory disclosure: I’m disabled (RSI in hands/arms), I use speech recognition on Windows because I don’t have a choice. I use Linux on virtual and real machines but admittedly rather poorly because there are significant bugs in nuance NaturallySpeaking that make it very difficult for disabled users like myself to use open-source and even non-Microsoft applications.

if you find something wrong in the text above, just remember, speech recognition and use. It makes mistakes, I correct some.

And I agree with poor.isabel : one interesting thing that could be added to Rosetta interface is the ability to search part of a string into a package translation and get in return all the strings which contain that part of a string. It would be very helpful in correcting typos.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your interesting point of view, Mark.

I am very impressed with your work in the Linux field (namely UBUNTU Linux). You are someone to look up to and a very good example for the meaning of the word “ubuntu”. I have been a Linux user since about 1998 and to be honest, at first i did not like Ubuntu too much, it was rather slow on my 128 MB computer (running the Gnome desktop) and also, my dialup connection did not do well with the constant downloading of packages. Sure it wasn’t annoyingly slow, but i did prefer having 3 CDs packed with applications the way other distributions did it. Lately however i started to dislike other distributions’ policies and learned to love Ubuntu more and more. I found out about kubuntu and the much faster xubuntu and now am planing to burn my personalized app CDs from packages downloaded from the repositories. What i am trying to say is that i find Ubuntu to be one of the few Great Linux distributions around and that i can only imagine it becoming greater and greater as time goes by.

So, CUDOES :)!