The Internationalisation of Linux
The internationalisation of Linux may not seem to be related to the ISS project. Then again, you have to think that the ISS will be inhabited by people from several different continents who will all have their own cultural preferences.
Not all of us use western English. The problem of understanding British English and American English falls by the wayside when you consider that the Japanese, Koreans and Chinese and other people from that end of our planet only use English when it is necessary. Perhaps to talk to programmers or engineers ?
Obviously, engineering projects are not based around non-profit community projects. They have to make money. The concept that "time is money" is understood by most folk. So, when it comes to international projects time is money becomes time is spent in translation. This is time consuming and can be very irritating for all concerned. Far better to write software that works in Japanese or a similar language which is based around various written characters which are not recognised by western man/woman.
One project that has been published recently in the Linux Journal is a review of a book about Polyglot Emacs 20.4. This is an extensive article which considers various technical issues as well as several eastern philosophical concepts. It's probably one of the better articles published in recent years. It's written by Jon Babcock who lives in Montana and studies karma, dharma and kanji culture. You might want to have a look at the LJ site for back issues ? Ken 'ichi Handa's Mule appeared back in 1992. This is multilingual Emacs. It's become so popular that there is now a Win32 windows version. A quick search on the internet should find it for you. As you can see in the screen shot above X-Emacs can be run in Japanese. Not many of us see this sort of thing in England without the help of the internet. As Jon Babcock say in his intro to his Polyglot article "for those of us who have yearned for a multi-script capability with a computer (more than twenty years ago), it has been a long and frustrating wait. "
For a more complete view (after looking at Polyglot Emacs) the best one that has been published so far is by Stephen Turnbull who is presently teaching and researching in Japan. A complete text with graphics can be found at http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Tools/I18N/LJ-I18N.html
The whole purpose of this project is to get people to understand that there is a strong demand for text processing in languages other than English. Especially if they are simple to understand and are reliable. Multi-Lingual Extensions Emacs (Mule) provides a stable environment in which such a project can be realised. It's the Linux kernel which helps this along.
I first heard about this project back in the 1970s myself. It's good to see that some of it has survived the march of time and has in fact taken off to become part way successful.
If you would like to discuss Mr Turnbull's views and his writings with him then please do write to him at turnbull@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp. He says that he welcomes feedback and questions from informed people would help him a great deal.