Oro Ede: Will this save Yoruba Langauge?

Found in Channel : Project Reviews — Damilare @ 9:37 am

It is uncommon these days to find websites providing content translation in several languages, what is common however is the absence of most African languages. To me, this means African languages are fast going into extinction. While African languages die as time ticks, some of her native speakers strive to the rescue.

One of the numerous initiatives to keep African Languages, notably Yoruba, is Oro Ede. Oro Ede is a web based translation app from Yoruba to English and vice versa. This project is single handedly spear-headed by Jide Otuyelu (Proud to be his friend).

Oro Ede has a simple search interface for looking up words from Yoruba to English or the other way round. The creator got content from books on Google Books and other authoritative sources, then and converted them for databases. The front end was deliciously done in Flex, while the backend was proudly developed in PHP (probably using Code Igniter frameworks).

Other initiatives, software, hardware or products to keep African Languages alive are

Koyin Yoruba Keyboard

Tavultsoft Yoruba Keyboard

Kasahorow Project

Lingua 2.4

(Contact me to update any project you know of.)

What makes me happy about Oro Ede is its web nature, which means, sooner, we could have several language packs in Yoruba for Open Source web applications like Joomla, PHPNuke, Eclipse, TinyMCE, PunBB, PHPBB, SugarCRM and many others.

And don’t be surprised if Oro Ede launches a web services based API for developers wanting to translate Yoruba words on the fly. Of course, I’d be the first to post about it here!

One Response to “Oro Ede: Will this save Yoruba Langauge?”

  1. Arthur Says:

    Hi. I would like to get the address of the people behind http://www.oroede.org/ There is no email address or any contact form on their website. Thanks in advance

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