by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2010/05/24 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/05/24/a10013991.aspx
Now at long last I can point everyone to the Indonesian Language Interface Pack for Windows 7!
It is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, and you can get it right here.
Yet another LIP brought to you by the Local Language Program,. sponsored by public Sector.
Indonesian is a huge market that is growing very fast (as befits the language known by such a uge percentage of all the people of Indonesia, in the fourth largest country in the world!).
A little background information on Indonesian:
NUMBER OF SPEAKERS:
30 million native, 140 million second language speakers
NAME IN THE LANGUAGE ITSELF:
Bahasa Indonesia
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia since the country's independence in 1945. It is spoken by about 30 million native speakers, mostly on the island of Java, while another 140 million use it as a second language in the multilingual archipelago. Most formal education in Indonesia is in Indonesia as are nearly all national media, and the government is promoting the language.
Linguistically spoken, it is a variant of a diasystem, representing a standardized dialect of Malay, which has been a trade language in the region for at least a thousand years. While Malay borrowed many words from English in colonial times, Indonesian was influenced by Dutch. The word for exhaust pipe demonstrates this very strikingly: it is knalpot in Indonesian, but ekzos (from exhaust) in Malay. Today, many words from other languages spoken in Indonesia, most prominently from Javanese, are finding their way into the Indonesian language.
As in Bahasa Melayu (Malay), the Bahasa in Bahasa Indonesia simply means language, so shortening the name to Bahasa does not make any sense.
FUN FACTS:
Indonesian shows the influences of many languages in its vocabulary: A lot of different peoples coming into the area brought new concepts and left their traces:
- From Sanskrit, words like agama (religion), bahasa (language) or pustaka (book) were borrowed;
- Arabic left kitab (book) or halal (lawful);
- portuguese keju (cheese, from queijo), mentega (butter, from manteiga), sepatu (shoe, from sapato), or jendela (window, from janela);
- Dutch more than 10,000 words, among them kantor (office, from kantoor), rekening (account, from rekening), kartu (card, from kaart), apotek (pharmacy, from apotheek) or buku (book, from boek).
As the word book, appearing three times in the list above, shows, Indonesian often draws from different foreign sources and the different loanwords can have slightly different meanings.
CLASSIFICATION:
Indonesian belongs to the Western Malayo-Polynesian languages, along with languages like Javanese, Balinese, which are also spoken in Indonesia, Malagasy, spoken in Madagascar, or Tagalog, spoken in the Philippines. The Malayo-Polynesian languages form a subgroup of the Austronesian language family.
SCRIPT:
Indonesian is written in Latin script. In 1972 Indonesia and Malaysia agreed on a unified spelling for Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu. The Indonesian spelling until then had still shown major influences of Dutch, like the tj which was used for the sound in the beginning of the English chin, or the dj.
For more information on Indonesian, click here.
Enjoy!
Maximilian Haru Raditya on 24 May 2010 10:30 PM:
Excellent! Thanks for making this LIP available. I'm sure it will benefit people here since English is not a primary language. It's also a nice entry point for introducing people more about technology, especially software.
Interestingly, as a native Indonesian, I just knew some written facts here :D
Michael S. Kaplan on 24 May 2010 10:54 PM:
If you try it out, feel free to give feedback about it, and of course tell your friends and colleagues.... :-)
ewesewes on 27 Aug 2010 12:46 AM:
Hi Michael,
Do you have any idea how to submit bugs for mistranslation? I found that some strings are just simply wrong.
Thanks,
Romi
Michael S. Kaplan on 27 Aug 2010 5:04 AM:
There isn't an easy mechanism for that currently. But any bugs you put here or send to me, I will make sure to get to the localization team....
ewesewes on 29 Aug 2010 9:37 AM:
Well, just for some start:
* The search box in the top right explorer window is just wrong: "Cari <foldername>", sounds like "Search foldername" not "Search (in) foldername". In the control panel the term goes crazy "Panel Kontrol Cari" (not consistent with other), it's like saying "Search Control Panel" (while we are really in the Control Panel already).
* "Check box" is usually translated as "Kotak centang", not "kotak cek". "Cek" refers to "cheque".
* "View" menu (in notepad and IE), I don't think it is a good idea to be translated to "Lihat". This "Lihat" term is too generic, and sometimes refers to "See". Maybe using noun is better: "Tampilan".
Maybe that's for now :)
--
romi