All of the current Kindle models (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, and Kindle Paperwhite) "natively" support localization/internationalization for multiple languages. Technically, there is no reason why these devices couldn't support other languages. All that it takes is a few files at the correct place.
You might wonder why I even raised this topic at all, given that there already had been an effort to localize the Kindle Touch 5.0.x firmware, which essentially seems to have died. (Yes, I'm also aware of the existing K4 localization efforts, but that's a different story)
The answer is two-fold: first, that old localization hasn't died at all. In almost every russian forum I visit, firmware 5.0.x is the de-facto standard for KT, and people are very reluctant to upgrade to 5.1.x or 5.3.x, because they would lose the localization. And consequently, they also (necessarily, but probably unvoluntarily) miss out on most of the development taking place here.
Second, since the time of our localization effort, the official Amazon firmwares have evolved... a lot! Now, every K4, K5, or KPW can be set to one of some 5 languages, and it simply works. The underlying mechanisms for a truely multilingual system (seem to) have been sorted out by Amazon, and the translations exist and are working.
That is an entirely different situation than what we started from about a year ago - where all we could do is speculate about which parts of the resources were (or weren't) language-specific and meant for translation.
So right now, for all framework versions, we already have multiple existing "official" translations at hand, which makes it much easier to identify the parts that must be localized -- even if we still might have to "reverse-engineer" some parts.
All in all, what I'm saying is this: right now, it should be relatively easy to determine the parts that must be translated in order to provide a fully localized K4/K5/KPW, but there would still be quite some effort required to actually provide custom localizations.
We could most probably re-use many of the ideas that eureka and I had back then, but it still wouldn't be a piece of cake.
Anybody in for such a project?
You might wonder why I even raised this topic at all, given that there already had been an effort to localize the Kindle Touch 5.0.x firmware, which essentially seems to have died. (Yes, I'm also aware of the existing K4 localization efforts, but that's a different story)
The answer is two-fold: first, that old localization hasn't died at all. In almost every russian forum I visit, firmware 5.0.x is the de-facto standard for KT, and people are very reluctant to upgrade to 5.1.x or 5.3.x, because they would lose the localization. And consequently, they also (necessarily, but probably unvoluntarily) miss out on most of the development taking place here.
Second, since the time of our localization effort, the official Amazon firmwares have evolved... a lot! Now, every K4, K5, or KPW can be set to one of some 5 languages, and it simply works. The underlying mechanisms for a truely multilingual system (seem to) have been sorted out by Amazon, and the translations exist and are working.
That is an entirely different situation than what we started from about a year ago - where all we could do is speculate about which parts of the resources were (or weren't) language-specific and meant for translation.
So right now, for all framework versions, we already have multiple existing "official" translations at hand, which makes it much easier to identify the parts that must be localized -- even if we still might have to "reverse-engineer" some parts.
All in all, what I'm saying is this: right now, it should be relatively easy to determine the parts that must be translated in order to provide a fully localized K4/K5/KPW, but there would still be quite some effort required to actually provide custom localizations.
We could most probably re-use many of the ideas that eureka and I had back then, but it still wouldn't be a piece of cake.
Anybody in for such a project?