[sword-devel] i18n of sword website

[sword-devel@crosswire.org]

This is a good idea. I will say Korean and Spanish should be in the frist tier for sure. Not sure about Thai and Arabic. 

Why Korean should be first tier?

1. According to http://www.glreach.com/globstats/ 
The ranking of the language used on the net is
English 36.5%
Chinese (combined with Trad and Simplified ) 10.9%
Japanese 9.7%
Spanish 7.2%
German: 6.7%
Korean: 4.5%

Not sure how many Japanese Christian out there. But I think we should consider Japanese also.

As for Korean, if you look at the CIA world fact book 2002 for just South Korea:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ks.html
Population: 48.324 million (July 2002 est.)
Religions:
Christian 49%, Buddhist 47%, Confucianist 3%, Shamanist, Chondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way), and other 1%

Which mean they have 23.68 M Christian

According to http://www.glreach.com/globstats/ 

There are 28.3 M Korean online (N. and S Korean combined), which represent 36.28% (total 78 M Korean- N+S) of their total population. And South Korean has the highest population of broadband Internet access amount all the nations. See 
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,56525,00.html
" With a population of 48 million, South Korea has a formidable position as the world's broadband Internet leader, far outstripping the United States and Europe. As of last month, 10 million Koreans -- which equates to 70 percent of households -- had home broadband connections supplying high-speed Internet access, said Jin-wook Son, managing director of Korea Telecom UK. "
02:00 AM Jan. 01, 2003 PT

Also, according to my Bible Translation teacher from Wycliffe, South Korean might replace USA become the largest number of missionary sending country very soon. It will be very important for Koeran missinoary to have commentary in Korean so they can do their job easier and faster. 


In a message dated 2/24/2003 1:50:21 PM Eastern Standard Time, danglassey@ntlworld.com writes:

> well, with the debate raging about plans for the web interface and 
> the importance of non-English stuff () it seems like a good time to 
> bring up the idea of translating the sword website into (at 
> minimum) 
> appropriate languages, imho these would do for starters:
> 
> Important imho:
> German
> Chinese Traditional and Simplified
> Thai
> Russian
> Arabic
> Korean?
> 
> Other potentially useful imho:
> Czech
> Danish
> Spanish
> Finnish
> French
> Italian
> Dutch
> Vietnamese
> others that there are modules for