Internationalising a spreadsheet for Pacific Basin languages

Abstract

As people trade and engage in commerce, an economically dominant culture tends to migrate language into other recently contacted cultures. Information technology (IT) can accelerate enculturation and promote the expansion of western hegemony in IT. Equally, IT can present a culturally appropriate interface to the user that promotes the preservation of culture and language with very little additional effort. In this paper a spreadsheet is internationalised to accept languages from the Latin-1 character set such as English, Maori and Bahasa Melayu (Malaysia’s national language). A technique that allows a non-programmer to add a new language to the spreadsheet is described. The technique could also be used to internationalise other software at the point of design by following the steps we outline.