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Award winning Afrikaans web browser

South Africa, 31 May, 2007: The popular and acclaimed Mozilla Firefox web browser is now officially released in Afrikaans. The Afrikaans translation is the work of award winning non-profit Translate.org.za and its volunteer community.

Between 15-20%, or almost 1 million South African Internet users make use of the Firefox web browser to view the Internet. This follows the growing world-wide trend where in less than two years, tens of millions of people worldwide have discovered the easier, faster and safer online experience that Firefox provides.

This is the first official release of Afrikaans translations in the Firefox 2.0 series. Translate.org.za has been creating interim builds for testing for a number of months. Dwayne Bailey, Director of Translate.org.za, says, “This is the most extensively tested translation release of ours to date, we think our Afrikaans users will appreciate the time and effort that we have taken to ensure quality”.

Translate.org.za is a non-profit organisation focusing on delivering Free Software in local languages. They won the African ICT Achiever award in 2006 for bridging the digital divide. Says Director, Dwayne Bailey, “Firefox is one piece in the puzzle of creating a fully Afrikaans computer”. He adds that with growing Afrikaans internet content it has become more important to have a web browser in Afrikaans.

Translated into more than 41 languages, Firefox 2 is available in a native language version for more people around the world than any other Web browser. Firefox is developed by an international community of contributors working together under the umbrella of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit, public-benefit organization dedicated to improving the Internet experience for people everywhere.

“Firefox 2 delivers the best possible online experience for people today,” said Mitchell Baker, CEO, Mozilla. “The improvements Mozilla has made to the ease of use, performance, and security in Firefox 2 reflect our ongoing, singular focus on meeting the needs of Web users all over the world.”

The latest version can be downloaded free from:
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all.html

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Dwayne Bailey from Translate.org.za is available for interviews. His fields of specialisation include:

• Free and Open Source Software

• Multilingualism

• Software translation

• Language rights advocacy

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Dwayne Bailey (083 443 7114)