You Can Conquer Digital Worlds in Scottish Gaelic, Thanks to Hard-Working Localizers · Global Voices
Widelands, Scottish Gaelic localization. © 2017 The Widelands Development Team, licensed under the GPLv2+.
A version of this post was originally published at r12n.
In the strategy game Widelands, the player begins as the chieftain of a small settlement. The player guides the development of the settlement from a single outpost building into a sprawling commercial empire. In many ways, Widelands resembles the game series The Settlers, which first appeared in 1993. While the latest version of The Settlers can only be played in English, Widelands can also be played in dozens of other languages: global languages such as French and Spanish, national languages such as Bulgarian and Finnish, and even several languages of fewer speakers such as Catalan, Galician, and Esperanto. The game’s free and open source software model welcomes volunteer collaborators, including translators, to expand its language offerings.
Proportion of respondents in the 2011 census aged 3 and above who stated that they can speak Scottish Gaelic. Image by SkateTier CC BY-SA 3.0.
Managing the Widelands Development Team since 2016 is <PERSON>, who joined the project as a Scottish Gaelic translator in 2013. <PERSON> (a pseudonym) has long been a respected member of the free software development community, having contributed translations to dozens of projects and managed broader translation initiatives.
Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig, not to be confused with Irish, Gaeilge) is a Celtic language indigenous to Scotland. Gaelic is spoken by around 58,000 people in Scotland, and over 7,000 people in Canada. Under pressure from English, Gaelic has been in decline as a community language for centuries, but a vigorous revitalization effort has been underway. A 2016 census found that only 522 public school students had Gaelic as the primary language at home; however, there has been a recent increase in Gaelic medium education.
While there are few examples of commercial software available in Gaelic, an impressive collection of free software — games, office software, mobile apps, etc. 200
— is now available. Even more impressive is that this wealth of Gaelic software is primarily the result of the volunteer efforts of just two people: GunChleoc and <PERSON>, a Glasgow-based language consultant and publisher. I recently spoke with <PERSON> about her experience helping to enable and promote Gaelic-language computing.
Gaming in a minority language
A version of the game Widelands was first posted online in 2001, and the game has been in continuous development ever since. Perhaps the primary factor in its longevity (aside from the fact that it is a lot of fun) is that it is a free and open source software project, entirely supported by a volunteer community of developers, artists, and writers. In contrast to proprietary software which is typically developed as commercial projects, free software is open to user modifications and contributions.
For a video game, these modifications might include new game mechanics or levels, new or refined artwork, and versions of the game that work on different platforms (Windows, OSX, Android, etc.). In the case of Widelands, this includes a global community that has completely or partially translated the game into 60 languages, including Scottish Gaelic (watch the game trailer in Scottish Gaelic below).
There is a solid case — moral, social, and cultural, if not initially commercial — for empowering language communities with fewer speakers to use their languages in digital contexts. GunChleoc has long believed that Gaelic deserves a digital presence, and has devoted an extraordinary amount of mostly-volunteer effort — literally years of work — into localizing software into Gaelic. Impressively, she is a not a native speaker, but a learner, which provides her with an additional context for understanding the language.
“My first contact with the language was through the rock band Runrig. I liked the sound of the language, so I first started learning the pronunciation,” she explains. “Then a bit of grammar and vocabulary, then I went to visit Scotland… let’s say it became somewhat addictive.”
A linguist and computer scientist by education, and a translator by profession, she also maintains the Fòram na Gàidhlig website and forum for Gaelic language learners.
“When I stated running the Fòram na Gàidhlig site, I decided that having a Gaelic-language user interface for the message board software would be a good learning tool for myself,” she explains. “Since there was nobody else to do it, with help from the community, I went ahead and translated it to (probably pretty awful) Gaelic.”
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