Aims
The Coalition, organized as a working group, will coordinate the development of communities and the deployment of technologies that will enable localization for all. Localization, the linguistic and cultural adaptation of digital content, is a prerequisite to make the multilingual and multicultural knowledge society a reality and to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. Participation in the knowledge society and “access to information in your language” is not a “nice-to-have”, it is a fundamental human right. In many cases, access (or the lack of it) can be a matter of life or death, as in the case of information on HIV/Aids prevention or in cases of justice and legal rights. The Coalition’s aim is to add a social, cultural, political and developmental dimension to mainstream commercial localization efforts, to move localization from a mono-dimensional to a multi-dimensional activity, encouraging and supporting localization activities whose rationale is not short-term profit, but long term societal impact.
The Coalition will have a major, very direct and practical impact on making multilingual content available on the internet. The establishment of the Coalition was only possible through the facilitation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The Coalition would like to thank the organizers and supporters of the IGF for their hard work to make this forum such a success.
Coordinator
Reinhard Schäler (The Rosetta Foundation)
Members
We would like to invite all those interested in supporting the work of the Coalition to join us in our efforts to create an Internet that speaks your language a reality. Membership to the Coalition is open to organisations and individuals working in the field. To join the Dynamic Coalition click here. The password to join the Coalition is "password".
Current Members (as of 15 January 2010):
Organisations
• Adobe
• AOL
• Arabize
• CES Felipe II
• docSolution
• DotSUB
• EasyLSP
• FGD Tanzania Limited
• Global textware bv
• ICANN
• ITAS Corp.
• Logrus International
• National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences Pakistan
• StorePOINT International Ltd
• The Rosetta Foundation
• Translate.org.za
• Translators without Borders
• University of Moratuwa
• Urdu Internet Council
• Welocalize
• XML-INTL
Individuals
• Daniel Goldshmidt
• Laura Nelson
• Ruben de la Fuente
Web site
www.localization4all.com
Mailing List
To join the mailing list, please click here. The password required to sign up is “localization”.
Contact
- Reinhard Schäler, Coordinator: Reinhard.Schaler(at)therosettafoundation(dot)org
- Stefanie Scheeder, Secretariat: Stefanie.Scheeder(at)therosettafoundation(dot)org
Reports
Report on Inaugural Meeting (Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, 17 November 2009) [pdf]