This is the original PR for the translation I did of Google in Hawaiian. I’ll add some more comments on this soon. If you want you can view and use the main Google search page in Hawaiian.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Google in Hawaiian

The University of Hilo announces the development of a Hawaiian language interface for Google, the world’s most popular Internet search engine.

The translation project is part of the Google in Your Language program, which encourages advocates of minority and indigenous languages to translate several of Google’s products into their own languages. The translation was completed by Keola Donaghy, an assistant professor at Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani, the College of Hawaiian Language at UH Hilo.

“The addition of a Hawaiian language interface for Google is a tremendous development for Hawaiian speakers,” said Dr. Kalena Silva, director of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani. “Google is the most heavily-used search engine on the Internet, and from a practical and a symbolic standpoint, this interface puts Hawaiian on par with the many other languages that Google currently supports.”

Searchers can select the Hawaiian language interface, see Google’s commands and navigational text in Hawaiian, and conduct searches in Hawaiian. Search results and Web pages found by Google are not translated into Hawaiian. Additional software is not required. Searchers simply select Hawaiian as their language preference on Google.

The Hawaiian language interface is currently visible only to users of Apple’s Safari Web browser who have selected ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i as their first language preference in their Macintosh OS X “International” preferences. The Hawaiian language interface will be available to users of other Web browsers soon.

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I had to keep quite while working on the translation, but unfortunately one of my friends and former co-workers stumbled across it. Google recognizes if you have set Hawaiian as your locale and use Safari on Macintosh. So she saw the translation before it was officially released. This “aha!” moment was posted on Facebook…



Why on earth she would suspect I had anything to do with it is beyond me.

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