The Greenstone interfaces have been fully or partially translated into over 60 languages. This includes the Greenstone 2 and 3 web interfaces, the Librarian Interface, the greenstone installers, and collection building scripts. The system is growing and language interfaces become out-dated as new features are added to the software. For each language, we hope to have a volunteer (or several) who undertakes to periodically maintain the interfaces for that language.
Multilingual facilities are only maintained for the latest version of Greenstone. Users who have an older version without the desired language should upgrade to the latest version. Note that for partially translated interfaces, non-translated text appears in English.
Here is a list of currently supported languages (i.e. languages which come when you download a binary or checkout Greenstone from SVN) and their past and present maintainers.
| Language | Maintainer | Past Maintainers and Contributers |
|---|---|---|
| English | (NZDL Project) | |
| Amharic | Yohannes Mulugeta, Nebyou Azanaw, Yodahe Zemichael | Abiyot Bayou |
| Arabic | Kamal Salih Mustafa Khalafala, Usama Salama | |
| Armenian | Tigran Zargaryan | |
| Bengali | Dilara Moni, Faisal Hasan | Prasenjit Majumder |
| Bulgarian | Krum Kelov | |
| Burmese | Kyaw Lwin, Dwight Martin | |
| Catalan | Eduardo del Valle Pérez, Universitat de les Illes Balears | |
| Chinese (Simplified) | Andrew Yan Han, Jing Wu | Kevin Fong, Anna Huang |
| Chinese (Traditional) | Lilly Ho | Shu-Jen Show |
| Croatian | Robert Pavičić | Boris Bosancic |
| Czech | Martin Schulz | Jakub Řehan |
| Dari | Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit | |
| Divehi | Fathmath Shiham | Aminath Riyaz |
| Dutch | Gerhard Riesthuis, Elke Duncker-Gassen | |
| Farsi | Azad Paknejad, Mohammad Hassanzadeh, Reza Monajjemi and Peyman Heydarian | Mohammad Karimi Yazdi |
| Finnish | Steve Legrand | |
| French | (UNESCO) John Rose and team including Julie Verleyen (temporarily - candidates are invited), Yvan Arnaud, Emmanuel Ngoi | Antonin Benoit Diouf,Georges Braoudakis, Vianou Francois Godonou, Sandraghassen S. Pillai, Guillaume Hatt, Celine Guimbertaud, Maxime Rouast |
| Gaelic (Scottish) | Laurinda Matheson and Rita Campbell | |
| Galician | Xaquín Lores | |
| Georgian | George Varamishvili, Vano Tsertsvadze | George Varamishvili, Vano Tsertsvadze |
| German | Nora Hausen | Sheshagiri R. Kulkarni LIS Department of Humboldt University, Doris Jung |
| Greek | Maria Tsoni | Dimitris Gavrilis |
| Gujarati | Lavji Zala | |
| Hebrew | ||
| Hindi | K.T Anuradha | B. S. Shivaram |
| Hungarian | Ferenc Katai and Sándor Koroknai | |
| Indonesian | Paul Mundy, Dewa Asmara Widjaksana | |
| Italian | Julian Fox | Marco Michelino, Massimo Pesenti, Vittore Casarosa |
| Japanese | Gaku Yamaguchi and Kazuhiro Takeuchi | Maruf Hasan |
| Kannada | S.K. Lalitha and K. S. Raghavan from Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science, Bangalore. | B. S. Shivaram, K. T. Anuradha, Pradeep Kumar.U.M., Prof. A. Neelameghan, K.N. Prasad |
| Kazakh | (UNESCO) Sergey Karpov and Kalima Tuenbaeva both from UNESCO | Bolatbek Amanbekov, Zhanat Kulenov |
| Khmer (Cambodian) | Alexis Lecoq Project Manager of for Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum Archives | Kosona Chriv, Smart Consulting (see below) |
| Kurdish | Peyman Heydarian | |
| Kyrgyz | Fedor Bakalov | |
| Korean | Hilario Seo | |
| Lao | Anousak Souphavanh | Dwight Martin |
| Latvian | Raitis Brodezhonok | |
| Malayalam | K. Rajasekharan, M.G. Sreekumar | K.T Anuradha, Sanjo Jose |
| Maori | Te Taka Keegan | |
| Marathi | Shubha Nagarkar | |
| Mongolian | Mendbayar Ichinkhorlo B. Sukhbaatar | |
| Nepali | Mohan Raj Pradhan | Anup Poudyal, Shiva Ram Shrestha |
| Norwegian | Lara Romsdal | |
| Polish | Maciej Jaros, Marcin Karkosz | Lech Borkowski |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | Eliel Carneiro de Oliveira, Claudia Wanderley, Prof. Adalgisa Pinheiro | |
| Portuguese (Portugal) | Antonio Pereira Rasga | José Borbinha |
| Pushto | Graeme Foster, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit | |
| Romanian | Constantinescu Nicolaie | |
| Russian | (UNESCO) Sergey Karpov and Kalima Tuenbaeva both from UNESCO, Georgy Litvinov, David (Georgy Litvinov's colleague) | Sergei Korobitsin, Vyacheslav Bakharev, Galina Bachmanova, Zhanat Kulenov |
| Serbian | Bogdan Trifunovic, Vladimir Risojevic | Tamara Butigan |
| Serbian (Bosnia Herzegovina) | ||
| Sinhala (Sinhalese) | Kumarasinghe - BGN Academic Coordinator Open University of Sri Lanka | Harsha Balasooriya, Assistant Librarian H.G.P. Sujani Chathurika Dilhani from the Open University of Sri Lanka |
| Slovak | Tomáš Fiala | |
| Spanish | (UNESCO) Jesús Tramullas, Diego Spano | |
| Tamil | Prof. A. Neelameghan, and S.K. Lalitha from Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science, Bangalore. V. Chandrakumar, A. Gnanasekar,Dr. Wmen, K.N. Prasad | |
| Telugu | Prof. R.S.R. Varalakshmi | Dr. Vijayalakshmi Balakumar |
| Thai | Neelawat Intaraksa and Pongtawat Chippimolchai from KIDS-D Project, Asian Institute of Technology | Maruf Hasan, Dwight Martin |
| Tigrinya | Gezae Haile and Yohannes Mulugeta | |
| Turkish | Özcan Kabakçıoğlu and Uğur Bulgan | |
| Ukrainian | Vasyl Tanovsky | |
| Urdu | Ata ur Rehman, Muhammad Shafiq Rana | |
| Vietnamese | Cao Minh Kiem, Vietnam Association of S&T Information (VASTI) |
Note, If you are currently a translator for Greenstone or have been one in the past, and if you've not been mentioned in the above list, please contact us at greenstone_team @ waikato.ac.nz. We greatly wish to credit your contribution to Greenstone.
For some languages, a translator has volunteered, but the translated interface is not yet available.
| Language | Translator |
|---|---|
| Afan Oromo | Ibsa Idris |
| Azeri | Shahram Sedghi |
| Bislama | Judith Hannoun |
| Dzongkha (Bhutanese) | Rinzin Dem |
| Igbo | Emmanuel Chukwu |
| Kashmiri | Gaffar Ahmad Nadim Khan |
| Kiswahili (Swahili) | Africa Jumanne Bwamkuu |
| Khmer (Cambodian) | Kosona Chriv, Smart Consulting |
| Malay | Mohd Hilmi |
| Oneida (Iroquoian) | Indigenous Language Institute |
| Samoan | South Pacific Hosting (a Lost Samoan business) |
| Swedish | Mikael Hiort af Ornäs |
| Tibetan | Nqawang Tsepag |
Our guideline is that non-programming users doing standard things with Greenstone should be able to work entirely in their own language; therefore we do not attempt to translate the comments that appear in program code, scripts, or configuration files. The language-dependent text in Greenstone comes in the following places.
To register as a designated Greenstone language maintainer, please send a request to the Greenstone team (greenstone_team @ waikato.ac.nz).
There are two methods for working with Greenstone language interface (apart from editing the macro files directly, which is not recommended).
We send you an Excel spreadsheet that contains all the English text strings, with empty cells for the translation. You fill it in and return it, and we install it in Greenstone. This method is probably the best for large-scale translation, but requires Microsoft software.
The Greenstone translator's interface is a Web tool that presents the English text strings needing translation, and provides boxes for entering the translated text. Once submitted, translations are stored in the appropriate language file. The system automatically determines which text strings need translating or updating, and can easily be used to update a language interface.
Generally it is best to use the spreadsheet to create the basic interface and the translation interface to fine tune or update it in the future. In either case you need a username and password, which we supply to designated Greenstone language maintainers.
As soon as you log in, the front page of the translator's interface is presented to you. Read the instructions and start translating! You don't have to translate all the strings in one session – you can stop and continue work later.
This page shows the current translation status of the languages.