Maori presence spreads to the Internet
Whenever we think of Maoris, images of fierce, face painted warriors and all but unstoppable rugby players instantly spring to mind; now though, the Maori presence has spread to the Internet in the latest move by Google to accommodate as many different languages as possible.
Google, who are undoubtedly the most widely used Internet Search Engine, have helped themselves attain their prominence within the market by being alert to demand such as that which had been shown for a Maori interface and by their ready willingness to include language skins developed by independent developers / translators; Maori now joins the many diverse languages that Google users can select as a skin for their search tool.
To see the wide choice of language skins available, go to the Google ‘translations page’; the full and impressive list of available languages will be displayed at the bottom of the page and the user’s default language setting can then be changed via the ‘preferences’ page.
Interestingly, the inclusion of the Maori language and the development of the language skin for Google only came about because of a series of coincidences; when the two main translators of the Maori language interface by chance posted a support call on a Maori language website, it was then picked up by some of the team which had been creating Maori interfaces to Microsoft Office and Windows 2003. The subsequent collaboration between these groups of personnel, the consistency thus gained across Microsoft and Google platforms and the coming on board of Te Taura Whiri I Te Reo Maori, the Maori language commission helped drive the project toward completion and acceptance by Google…and the rest, as they say, is history.