Office 2010 now available in Inuktitut
The Office 2010 Language Interface Pack for Inuktitut is now available for free download.
A Language Interface Pack allows you to change the user interface in the following Office 2010 applications: Excel, OneNote, InfoPath, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. The pack includes a spell checker and is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
A LITTLE BACKGROUND ON INUKTITUT
Inuktitut is, along with English and French, the official language of Nunavut, the largest of the territories of Canada. There are approx. 35,000 Inuktitut speakers.
While for a long time Inuktitut shared the fate of most indigenous languages in the Americas, namely getting closer and closer to extinction, the last census data indicate that the number of speakers have stopped declining in Canada and might even be increasing in Nunavut.
Fun facts:
- Inuktitut is spoken in one of the least densely populated areas of the world. While the area of Nunavut is the size of Western Europe, its population is 30,000. Even Greenland has double the density.
- Inuktitut knows only three vowels (a, i, u), which can be pronounced short or long.
- How many words are there for snow in Inuktitut? Well, the whole "The Inuit have a thousand words for snow" story is an urban legend. For an explanation of why and how this is nonsense, see this Wikipedia article.
For more information on Inuktitut and Inuit language, visit the Pirurvik Centre for Language, Culture and Wellbeing.
OTHER MICROSOFT PRODUCTS IN INUKTITUT
If you are an Inuktitut localizer, translator, author, or just need to know how the terminology and UI are translated in these products, visit the Microsoft Language Portal next week when the Inuktitut Office 2010 reference material will be available for online Search.