ILWIS-GIS IN YOUR LANGUAGE

ILWIS-GIS does not yet exist in other languages, but we feel that this is of crucial importance. The generous ILWIS developers are not linguists and with other languages, the ILWIS-GIS community needs to help itself. Since ILWIS is open source, there is no funding for the translating the help files.  Still, the user-friendliness of this GIS would increase enormously if we could provide versions in other languages. Therefore, we look for volunteers who are willing to translate the texts of the menu and the help-file into their own language. With your contributions, a bit at the time, ILWIS can become a GIS available in a large variety of languages.

If you want to volunteer, please contact us.

The ILWIS Menu

The text of the menu and buttons in ILWIS are defined in a set of text files, which all end at .eng

Within these files, each term is preceded by a number, and the term itself is placed between " "

For other languages, each file needs to be opened in a text editor, like Notepad, and each English term needs to be replaced by the translated term between the " ". The number should never be changed or deleted, not should a new line be added.

We have made a zip-file with the little files with the programme terms, for you to download. It should not be all that much work to translate them. When you are finished, you can send them to us and we will review them and then place on the internet for downloading. 

The helpfile

The helpfile is considerable more work. To keep it manageable, it should be done by a group of volunteers. The helpfile is in .chm format, but it has been built up from a collection of files in .htm format. 

Download the htm ILWIS help files.  In order to be open this file, you need to have 7Zip installed on your computer. Download: 7Zip. The file contains the original help files neatly organized into different directories. Open the compressed file and extract the content somewhere on your computer where you can keep the directories and underlying directories unchanged.

If you want to translate the help file, you should open the .htm files in MS-Word or OpenOffice, translate paragraph by paragraph, placing each translated paragraph underneath the previous English text.

Each text with a link in it, should be Underlined and marked in blue, so that later on the necessary links can be placed to the translated file.

You should then safe the document with the same name as a .htm file in THE UNDERLYING SUB-DIRECTORY with the same name but ending in "_translated", so that a complete set of files gets created with the same file names. This will help the final editor find the exact file names for the new translated help file. When everything is ready, the entire set of files and directories will be converted into a .chm file. In order to do that, it is very important that all file names of the translated texts remain the same, and be placed in the correct directory. 

Don't do anything to the image files in the image directories.

Farsi

ILWIS in Iran

ILWIS plays especial role in GIS of Iran, It is the only GIS software with Farsi ebook (you can find it from here). Many governmental organizations of Iran such as Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Energy, etc., provide their geographic data in ILWIS format. Since it is open Source, young Iranian researchers prefer it to other market packages to avoid international legal issues. Many students are training ILWIS it in the university of Iran. 

GOOD NEWS For Iranian Users: ILWIS is has been translated into Farsi

Mr. Khodayar Abdollahi (Iranian hydrologist), Mansoor Moazen-Pour (ITC alumnus) and Leila Bagheri translated ILWIS to farsi. This has been a fabulous service to the Iranian people because ILWIS will be the only farsi supported Geographic information System. As result this will be a great opportunity for Iranian high and university school students to access a GIS for the first time in their lives, Thanks to the ITC and the enthusiastic developers of ILWIS! 

There also is an ILWIS-GIS website in Farsi at: http://www.iranhydrology.com/. You can also get the training module in Farsi here.

Portuguese

The most important ILWIS pages have now been translated into Portuguese by José Pedro Gonçales Santos. This is very important, because Brazil is one of the largest users of ILWIS. Thank José!

Greek

Stamatis Voudouris, geologist, has just sent us a file of the Quick Guide in Greek. A great contribution; moreover Stamatis translated the frontpage into Greek and there is more to follow. I am really thrilled that now soon, Greek users will have their programme with the terminology in their own language!

Thanks Stamatis!

Italian

The first page in Italian has now been translated by Pietro Blu Giandonato! This is really significant because now ILWIS appears as a GIS in Italian searches. Thanks Pietro Blu!