Internationalization/Localization

The KDE Project recognizes that the availability of KDE in a user's native language is paramount to making a user feel comfortable and at home. The KDE Internationalization/Localization team (also called the I18N/l10N team) has taken on the task of translating KDE applications into many different languages. The Internationalization team consists currently of about 300 individuals who have translated KDE applications and KDE documentation into 70 languages. Some of the languages rarely supported by commercial software are: Afrikaans, Catalan, Estonian, Esperanto, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian and Slovenian. All KDE applications support "right-to-left" interface mode and KDE 3.2 will feature increased support for Indic languages (Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, Syriac, Tibetan, Khmer). On the technical side of the issue be it noted that the GNU GetText tools and KBabel are of central importance to the internationalization process. In order to cope with the varying string length of textual expressions, program dialogs must be geometry managed.