International Language Support
This section includes information on language support under Fedora.
- Localization (translation) of Fedora is coordinated by the Fedora Localization Project .
- Internationalization of Fedora is maintained by the Fedora I18n Project .
Language Coverage
Fedora features a variety of software which is translated in many languages . For a list of languages refer to the translation statistics for Anaconda, which is one of the core software applications in Fedora.
Language Support Installation
To install langpacks and additional language support from the Languages group, run this command:
su -c 'yum groupinstall <language>-support'
In the command above, <language> is one of assamese, bengali, chinese, gujarati, hindi, japanese, kannada, korean, malayalam, marathi, oriya, punjabi, sinhala, tamil, telegu, thai, and so on.
SCIM users upgrading from earlier releases of Fedora are strongly urged to install scim-bridge-gtk, which works well with third-party C++ applications linked against older versions of libstdc++.
Transifex
Transifex is Fedora's online tool to facilitate contributing translations to projects hosted on remote and disparate version control systems. Many of the core packages use Transifex to receive translations from numerous contributors.
Through a combination of new Web tools , community growth, and better processes, translators can contribute directly to any upstream project through one translator-oriented Web interface. Developers of projects with no existing translation community can easily reach out to Fedora's established community for translations. In turn, translators can reach out to numerous projects related to Fedora to easily contribute translations.
Fonts
Fonts for most languages are installed by default on the desktop to give good default language coverage.
Default language for Han Unification
When not using an Asian locale in GTK-based applications, Chinese characters (ie Chinese Hanzi, Japanese Kanji, or Korean Hanja) may render with a mixture of Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts depending on the text when Pango does not have sufficient context to know which language is being used. The current default font configuration seems to prefer Chinese fonts. If you normally want to use Japanese or Korean say, you can tell PANGO to use it by default by setting the PANGO_LANGUAGE environment variable. For example
export PANGO_LANGUAGE=ja
would make pango rendering assume Japanese text when it has no other indications.
Japanese
fonts-japanese has been renamed to japanese-bitmap-fonts.
Khmer
Khmer OS Fonts khmeros-fonts have been added to Fedora for Khmer coverage in this release.
Korean
un-core-fonts replace baekmuk-ttf-fonts as the new Hangul default fonts.
Complete list of changes
All the fonts changes are listed on their dedicated page.
The Fonts SIG takes loving care of Fedora fonts. Please join this special interest group if you are interested in creating, improving, packaging, or just suggesting a font. Any help will be appreciated.
Input Methods
There is a new YUM group called input-methods and Input Methods for many languages are now installed by default. This allows turning on the default input method system and immediately having the standard input methods for most languages available. It also brings normal installs in line with Fedora Live.
im-chooser and imsettings
It is now possible to start and stop the use of Input Methods during runtime thanks to the imsettings framework. The GTK_IM_MODULE environment variable is no longer needed by default but can still be used to override the imsettings.
Input methods only start by default on desktops running in an Asian locale. The current locale list is: as, bn, gu, hi, ja, kn, ko, ml, mr, ne, or, pa, si, ta, te, th, ur, vi, zh. Use im-chooser via System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Input Method to enable or disable Input method usage on your desktop.
ibus
Fedora 10 includes a technology preview of a new input method system called iBus which has been developed which may replace SCIM as the default input method system in Fedora 11 to overcome some of its limitations. It already provides a number of input method engines:
- ibus-anthy (Japanese)
- ibus-chewing (Traditional Chinese)
- ibus-hangul (Korean)
- ibus-m17n (Indic and many other languages)
- ibus-pinyin (Simplified Chinese)
- ibus-table (Chinese, etc)
and has immodules for GTK (ibus-gtk) and Qt (ibus-qt). We encourage people to install ibus, test it for their language, and report any problems.
Indic Onscreen Keyboard
Fedora 10 includes iok, an onscreen virtual keyboard for Indian languages, which allows input using Inscript keymap layouts and other 1:1 key mappings. For more information see the homepage http://fedorahosted.org/iok.
Indic Collation Support
Fedora 10 included sorting support for following language. Now onwards listing as well as order of menus in these languages will be represented in sorted order and one can easily and reliably find required element.
Language Coverage
Marathi
Hindi
Gujarati
Kashmiri
Sindhi
Maithili
Nepali
Konkani
Telugu
Kannada
Punjabi