Our Story
The story of An Drouizig begins in 2003 with the desire to promote the Breton language in the exclusive field of new technologies, personal computers, PDAs, mobile phones, ATMs…
The promotion of Breton in the digital domain
Three main axes to this promotion:
- The design and production of a spelling and syntax checker for the Breton language “An Drouizig Difazier“, its maintenance, porting and promotion.
- The translation into Breton of software that can be “localized”, often under a free license. Ideally cross-platform software (Windows, GNU/Linux/MacOS X…) but not only.
- Providing and improving support for Breton languages and/or software.
In this last category are a host of more or less related activities:
- Writing lexicons to make Breton computer vocabulary accessible. In particular, a glossary of vocabulary used in software.
- Writing tutorials in Breton to learn how to use software.
- Finishing and porting Gaelic and Celtic fonts to 16-bit UNICODE format.
- The design and marketing of a C’HWERTY keyboard adapted to Breton, Esperanto and diacritical languages in general (out of print today).
A digital life in Breton
With the experience accumulated since 2003 in software translation software such as Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, LibreOffice, The Gimp or Inkscape are now allowed to present a coherent whole. The lexicons available and the fact that the vocabulary does not have to be relearned when moving from one application to another make the software translated by An Drouizig effective means of having a digital life in Breton.
The tools and resources available
An Drouizig maintains web pages to publicize his work. The association also strives to present those of others insofar as they relate to its field of activity. The site archives documentation on the translation of software for Breton and more generally for minority languages.
On this site you will find a presentation of our activities and software to download. Among them localized versions of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, LibreOffice. There is also the Breton language pack for the commercial Microsoft Office suite, all versions supported, including MacOffice. An Drouizig also offers specialized lexicons. These form a set of linguistically consistent solutions. The vocabulary is, in this way, not to be relearned while passing from one application to another. You will also find resources such as the Hunspell corrector, fonts, digitized Breton books.
In addition to Breton, An Drouizig works jointly with specialists to develop spell checkers for Latin, ancient Greek and Occitan. We have carried out in our story several language tool prototyping projects for Corsican, Tibetan, Dzongkha, Khmer in recent years. If you are interested, come and meet us!
Our past, present and future actions
In addition to our aforementioned activities, a few projects have come to an end during the history of An Drouizig. At the end of 2006, Microsoft thus assigned the identifier code (LCID) 0x047e=1150 was assigned to the Breton language. An Drouizig made the request in 2002, then supported by Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg. Its existence allows a translation into Breton of Microsoft products, in particular of its Windows operating systems.
Through our action, supported by a handful of individuals, the Mozilla Foundation has made Breton official in its products. An Drouizig manages the translations.
- Consideration by OpenOffice.org of the locales br-FR (Breton) and la-VA (Latin)
- Inclusion by OpenOffice.org of three other French languages (Tahitian, Shimaore, Kibushi) Writing keyboard drivers specific to languages with diacritics.
- Thus, a keyboard driver compatible AZERTY was written taking into account Esperanto diacritics. Other keyboard drivers have also been written: for Shimaore, Fulani, and Ewe.
Other construction sites remain open or to be opened:
- The development of a computerized dictionary of synonyms for the Breton language.
- The development of a computerized rhyming dictionary for the Breton language.
On Wayback Machine, you can access old versions of the An Drouizig site and find the history of our projects.
