Unusual alphabets needed!

May 26, 2010 12:21 PM

Where can I get unusual alphabets to type and a Nepali translator?

I work with refugees and I am trying to get some government benefit forms translated into Nepali, Burmese, Arabic, Korean and Vietnamese. some of these translations will have to be done in my computer, but I don't know where I can download the alphabets from. Is there a website that provides them, possibly for free?

Also, I have heard that it is difficult to find a Nepali speaker that can write it properly (my refugees come from the conflict with Bhutan, so they have been living in refugee camps and aren't able to write Nepali). Can you point me into the right direction to find a Nepali translator? It would be a one page document. My boss could pay them only if they have a SSN.

thank you!

posted by Tarumba to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: I don't know about Burmese Nepali, but if you're running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, your computer probably can do Arabic, Vietnamese, and Korean already.

Try this:

• Open the start menu
• Click "Control Panel"
• Click "Regional and Language Options" (or similar, depending on your OS)
• Click the "Languages" tab
Check both the boxes for "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages (including Thai)" and "Install files for East Asian languages
• Click the Details button under the "Text services and input languages box"
• Click "Add..."
• Add whatever keyboard layouts or IMEs you need.
• Next click "Language Bar..."
• Make sure "Show the language bar on the desktop" is checked"
• Click "OK" on all open windows
You may be prompted to insert your Windows CD (or recovery CD), you may also need to reboot your computer. After you have done this, you should be able to view text in Korean and Vietnamese (actually Vietnamese looks a lot like English, with some extra dots and lines in places), and many other languages as well. You can switch your input method between languages by finding the "EN" on your taskbar, clicking it, and choosing another language from the menu. You may need to play with the language bar options to get your language to type properly - depends on the particular language. To test what languages you can view on your computer, try visiting some websites written in those languages. Here's CNN Arabic and CNN Korean. Here's a Nepali news site. Do they look ok on your computer after following the directions above? All of these display fine on my work computer running Windows XP Professional, with all the language options turned on. The instructions I wrote above are for Windows XP. Other versions of Windows such as Windows 7 or Vista can be configured in a similar manner, but the options and menu items might be named differently.

posted by Vorteks at 12:45 PM on May 26, 2010

Sorry for the poor formatting in the post above... looks like I botched my HTML a bit. I think you get the idea though.
posted by Vorteks at 12:46 PM on May 26, 2010

Best answer: Oh, and although I don't know any Napali translators, I would go to Proz.com to look for one.
posted by Vorteks at 12:47 PM on May 26, 2010

Response by poster: I am amazed. thank you so much.
posted by Tarumba at 12:58 PM on May 26, 2010

Best answer: Here are links to a few Nepali fonts, and here's one for Burmese.

Also, another place to look for translators: do you have a university nearby? If you get in touch with their Linguistics or Asian Studies program, they can probably point you in the right direction. They may not have anyone right there on the faculty who can write Nepali — and if they do, the prof in question may be too busy to help — but they'll at least be able to put you in touch with someone in the community who can do what you need.
posted by nebulawindphone at 2:25 PM on May 26, 2010

Nepali is written in devanagari, the same script as for Hindi, so if you're drawing a blank, you could search for Hindi resources instead.
posted by threeants at 9:38 AM on May 27, 2010

You mean scripts, not alphabets. And you mean fonts supporting those scripts, not alphabets.

Please tell us the exact system configuration you are using and the software you intend to compose these documents with. Don’t be vague.

Will these be printouts only, or PDFs, or actual Web pages?

SIL is a reasonable source for legitimate free fonts in non-Latin scripts.
posted by joeclark at 10:12 AM on May 28, 2010