Multilingual PC Software

There is no reason why people who work in languages other than English should accept second best, so we are pleased to report that things continue to improve. For many languages, the options available are as good as the best English language software. Prices continue to fall and this must be good news for voluntary organisations -- however, as with all software, you get what you pay for and some of the cheaper programs could turn out to be false economies. Some of the developments that we had expected have failed to materialize -- for example we have still not seen a satisfactory Urdu spelling checker.

How to Choose

There is now so much on the market that it is more important than ever to choose carefully and to take impartial advice from a supplier who can offer more than one option for each language, or group of languages. Price is obviously an important consideration but you should also take a careful look at ease of use, quality of fonts and whether technical support and training can be supplied. Try not to be tempted by programs which offer huge numbers of fonts as these are not always of high quality -- it is better to have a smaller number of quality fonts which people actually want to use than a great many "decorative" fonts which are sometimes hardly legible.

Check that the software you intend to buy is suitable for your existing computer and operating systems. Some very good multilingual software is produced by small software companies which can mean that new versions for new operating systems may not always be released as quickly as English programs from major corporations. Conversely, if you are still running Windows 95, for example, you will find that some of the newer programs are incompatible. Most importantly check that the software runs on a standard English system -- some applications may require you to be running a foreign language ("localized") version of Windows. Whilst this can provide you with a very high quality system it is usually a much more expensive choice and can cause problems for other users (for example does everyone in the office want all their menus and on-screen instructions in Chinese or Arabic?).

Many programs work within your existing English applications and this is often an ideal solution because you are adding extra language capability to software which you are already familiar with and which is probably of very high quality. If you decide on this option check whether the new program will work with any English software or (as is often the case) just with certain versions of Microsoft Word or Microsoft Office (not much use if you are running AmiPro or WordPerfect!). Also bear in mind that for languages which are written from right to left (such as Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu) this is usually not a satisfactory solution (except for short passages of text). In these cases a stand-alone word processor designed for one particular language can often be a better choice.

With the huge drop in the price of hard disk capacity and computer memory all new computers should be capable of running the newest multilingual programs. But, if you have an older machine, with a smaller hard disk and less memory, you may have difficulty fitting it in or getting it to work at a reasonable speed -- Chinese software especially can take up a large amount of space on the hard disk.

Multi-Language Software

More and more packages are becoming available with a huge range of languages. Some are surprisingly cheap and can be very useful for people who want to produce small amounts of text in many languages (or who are working mostly in languages that have simple scripts). However these systems often cut corners and to work satisfactorily in more complex scripts (such as Chinese, Japanese, Urdu and the Indian languages) it is usually better to choose a program that has been designed especially for your language.

Windows XP Professional (the Microsoft operating system released in 2002) has much more multilingual capabilities than previous versions of Windows and should be considered. Check the Microsoft Windows XP Professional Multilingual Capabilities for more details.

Translation Software

The most common misapprehension about software for writing in different languages or scripts is that it will automatically translate the text for you (i.e. type in English and instantly see Bengali or Urdu on the screen) -- it is not as simple as this! All the software we have talked about so far requires a full working knowledge of the language that is being written.

Software to help translate from one language to another does exist but it is nearly always to or from English (rarely between other languages). It is mostly for European languages plus a few others including Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. If used carefully it can be very useful to an experienced translator. It can also help  you to follow the gist of some text in another language by translating it into your own language. Don't expect any software to give a translation which is 100 percent accurate or which is of the quality you could expect from an experienced human translator.

A Word About the Web

It is possible to create Web pages in any script or language if you use the appropriate software. If it is loaded onto the page as text the people reading it will require a compatible font on their own computer. To avoid the need for this the non-English text can either be inserted as a picture (which takes up quite a lot of space) or PDF file (Portable Document Format) or you can use embeddable fonts which give the reader access to all the characters you have included in your text.

Similarly for e-mail, both sender and recipient need to have compatible fonts or the message needs to be sent as an attachment with embeddable fonts.

If you are thinking of creating multilingual content for the Web you should look for Unicode based software. Unicode is a single coding system that is big enough to contain all the characters of the world's scripts, each having its own unique identity. In the days before Unicode, trying to view a web page in a different language could easily result in garbage being displayed if you didn't download their particular font. Unicode brings to the web an internationally agreed standard for text storage, processing and display.

The Future

Predicting software trends is always a risky business but in the next couple of years we can expect to see ever falling prices and ever increasing quality. Improved translation software will probably come in time and spelling checkers and PC dictionaries for more languages are likely to be with us soon. Language learning software is widely available for 'major' languages (European, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese) but many small developers are working on producing CD ROMs for other languages including many of the UK's community languages. In short, an interesting time ahead for you and your multilingual PC!

Language by Language

• Indian scripts: (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil Esc)

  Many cheap Indian language fonts are available, but they are not very much use unless accompanied by software which will allow you to type all the characters correctly and easily.

  It is still very important to check that all the required characters are available and that they are of the style preferred by the target audience. This is especially true for Bengali where some software doesn't include the full range of characters to type the language in the way that most Bengali speakers in the UK prefer. When asking for font samples it is a good idea to take a look at the range of "conjunct" characters to be sure the software is capable of producing the type of text you need.

  One new program that has proved to be very successful is "Executive"; this comes in separate versions for Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Punjabi and Tamil and works within Microsoft Word. A new version is expected soon which will work with the other components of Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Access etc.)

• Chinese:

  Look out for a wide range of input methods so that the software can be used by people who have learnt to type in any part of the Chinese speaking world. Also check whether you are getting both Simplified and Traditional script and that the software will run with English Windows. Twinbridge Chinese Partner is a widely used and well-proven solution, which runs in all versions of English Windows, but there are many other options to choose from which may suit different needs.

• Japanese:

  Make sure all three forms of Japanese script (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji) are included and that the software runs under English Windows -- a good choice for most situations is Japanese Partner though once again there are other good quality choices depending on your requirements.

• Urdu:

  This is the language where the most progress has been made in the last two years (partly because there was more ground to be made up than with other languages!). In mid 1996 there was no satisfactory Urdu package for Windows at a reasonable price and many users were still working with DOS programs such as "Surkhab" and "Page Composer." Since then "InPage" has halved in price and continues to be regularly updated with numerous improvements including more fonts and the addition of characters to allow the typing of Pushto and Sindhi. Cheaper (but less professional) options have since become available and we can expect to see more programs on the market in the near future. Beware -- some Windows Urdu software which at first seems very interesting may turn out to run only with Arabic Windows -- thus increasing the cost and reducing convenience to other users.

• Arabic and Farsi:

  Both these languages are included in InPage and other Urdu packages and are also in some multi-language systems. If you are prepared to run Arabic Windows there is a huge range of Arabic software available. Windows XP Professional brings better support for Arabic languages including Farsi than previous versions of Windows.

• European languages:

  Fonts are easily available for all European languages and many multi-language packages include the ability to produce text in all East and Western European languages including Greek and Cyrillic scripts.

• African languages:

  Many are written in Roman script without accents (e.g. Somali) and so require no special fonts or software. Others such as Twi and Ewe use special characters that can easily be provided with a special font with its own keyboard driver. Amharic requires special software to handle the complexities of the script but there are one or two high quality options for this.