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List:       olpc-localization
Subject:    Re: [Localization] [FM Discuss] Proposed book on Reading and
From:       Clytie Siddall <clytie () riverland ! net ! au>
Date:       2010-04-17 5:20:15
Message-ID: A1C3910A-B117-4504-A038-944D6A1006AE () riverland ! net ! au
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To: FLOSS Manuals, OLPC Localization

On 16/04/2010, at 2:11 AM, James Simmons wrote (in part):

> There is also a shortage of free books in languages other than English

This is a key problem which came up recently in an OLPC project in Vietnam. The OLPC \
volunteer needed immediate information on how to use the ebook facility on the XO, so \
your book will definitely help with that.

However, finding free non-English ebooks is a much larger issue.

It comes down to the lack of translated or non-English texts in key sources like \
Project Gutenberg. For example, there are no Vietnamese texts in PG. However, there \
is a great deal of Vietnamese literature and popular fiction in print.

The OLPC volunteer was unable to find free Vietnamese ebooks online. I did some \
digging around myself, to try and help her, and it was a messy task:

1. licensing: there are a lot of pirated texts available online as "free ebooks"

2. sites require you to register and login

3. sites are extremely difficult to navigate, and overburdened with flashy \
advertizing

This may well apply to other third-world languages.

How does the OLPC user find non-English ebooks?

Hopefully, we can identify at least one reliable source for each language. Does \
anyone here know of any non-English free ebook sources?

We could also supply a viable search string for each language (as part of the ebook \
activity, translated via Pootle). It would need a specific comment, because I'm sure \
that Vietnamese is not the only language in which there are two ways to translate the \
English word "free".

free = miễn phí (no cost)

free = tự do (up to you)

from Clytie 

Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team

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