by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2013/01/24 07:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/01/24/10387957.aspx
Previous parts in the series:
Over on the Micriosoft Language Portal Blog, colleague Palle Petersen mentioned on December 21st Windows 8 now available in Cherokee:
Windows 8 became available in Cherokee this week. In the making for over 3 years, the Cherokee Language Interface Pack for Windows 8 was built in collaboration with the Cherokee Nation Language Team. The work also involved creating a completely new font for Windows 8, Gadugi, a Cherokee word which roughly translates to “working together".
The release is part of the Microsoft Local Language Program, which will eventually bring 109 languages to Windows 8.
Head over to the Local Language Program site to see a list of the languages available for Windows and Office, and what's coming to Windows 8 and Office 2013.
No offense to Palle, but he did skip an important detail or two.... :-)
You can see hints in Cherokee Is First Native American Language On Windows 8:
TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma -
Cherokee is the first Native American language fully integrated into the new Windows 8 operating system, a fact that will be celebrated Wednesday at Sequoyah Schools in Tahlequah.
More than 20 years ago Microsoft employee Tracy Monteith, a Cherokee from North Carolina, asked the company to include his native language in the computer's core operating system. It wasn't until 2010 that Cherokee Nation language technologists met with Monteith and others at Microsoft to get the project off the ground.
A team of translators was assembled, ranging from tribal employees, speakers in the community and even Cherokee college students.
Lois Leach, a 56-year-old clerk in the Cherokee Nation roads department, logged more than 100 volunteer hours over the past year translating computer terms that did not exist when the Cherokee language was developed.
"You don't look at yourself really doing anything that huge until you see it come together," Leach said. "It's amazing to think our work will be shared all over the world."
Wednesday morning, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Bill John Baker and Microsoft officials will be on hand at the school for an event recognizing the accomplishment.
That story skipped a detail or two as well. :-)
The main thing both stories missed was that at the heart of this project was the first step of two of the three federally recognized Cherokee groups -- Cherokee Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians -- that were long sundered across a Trail of Tears that few outside those two communities will ever fully be able to understand the depth of, yet came back together (just as in the promise of the Gadugi font's name in "coming together") to help in the process of translating and more importantly localizing Windows 8 to Cherokee.
The original sundering between the two groups, the one that had to fight to survive as it was forced out and the one that fought to stay in its ancestral land remained important, as a part of the grand mythology weaved into both communities. Yet it became so important for them to come together after over 180 years apart so they could tell an even larger story.
A story of the children of these two communities connecting via Skype, and as two groups of elders saw were able to reach out and communicate and understand each other.
They aren't just coming together -- they were together all along, and they are together now.
And as would have been said by Tsali (ᏣᎵ), They are Cherokee!