The GeekSpeak column has two goals: to inform the community GeekSpeak Jost Zetzsche about technological advances and at the same time encourage [email protected] the use and appreciation of technology among translation pro- fessionals. Jost also publishes a free technical newsletter for translators (www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit). The F-Word Again

I am well aware that I fonts for all kinds of lan- , and —but some of these recently rhapsodized rather romanti- guages and scripts that you could are not covered by Code2000. cally about codepages, Unicode, and download to ready your system. This And finally, you should also look fonts, but please bear with me just might be a fine way of going about it, at Doulos SIL. This font does not once more: I promise that this time I but it is also one that will slow down cover as broad a range of languages, will actually have some useful infor- your system quite a bit—the more but it includes virtually every feasible mation for you. fonts, the slower the computer. character needed for almost any As language professionals—and By the way, a “” is a Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing particularly as project managers—we font that uses the code points for the system, many of which are not need to have the ability to work in a characters of the script according to included by the fonts above. large variety of languages. Long gone the Unicode convention. A non- If you round out your existing are the days when “a large variety of Unicode font merely replaces code assembly of fonts with these new- languages” meant those natively points of “ordinary” fonts, so you do found friends, I can (almost) promise spoken in Europe. To work ade- actually see characters when you open that you will never have to scratch quately in the languages of the world, the text without the font—just not the your head again at odd-looking we need to have fonts on our system ones you were hoping to see. So as a squares or other placeholders where that can display the languages not little side note: always, always remind you should be seeing text. Whether covered by the fonts that come prein- your translators in less common lan- you actually understand what you are stalled on our computers. guages to work with Unicode fonts! seeing, however, exceeds the terms of So how does one do that? Now back to our strategy session. this warranty. First, there is the panic strategy. To equip your computer with the fonts Here is how this plan of action works. you will need at some point—without Code2000 You receive a translation in, say, panicking or having the computer run http://sourceforge.net/projects/code2000 Inuktitut, and all you see is empty at a snail’s pace—you will need to get squares or other odd-looking place- yourself some fonts that cover a huge Everson Mono holders. You panic, Google something variety of scripts. www.evertype.com/emono like “Inuktitut font,” download a You should probably start with couple of fonts, install them, restart Code2000, which is arguably the most DoulosSIL your computer so that they are prop- important font that a multilingual scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?si erly loaded, and then find out that project manager should have on his or te_id=nrsi&id=DoulosSILfont they are actually not Unicode fonts. her system. This is the most compre- You search Google again, this time for hensive Unicode font, with more than “Inuktitut Unicode font.” You install 60,000 glyphs and an impressive these, restart your computer, and you array of languages. I do not want to can finally see the text. bore you with endless lists of lan- This is the strategy I would recom- guages and scripts that you have mend! never seen or heard of (and I can Just kidding. almost guarantee you that there are shop Obviously, you want to be pre- many among those that Code2000 NXT b Transit – just what pared to work with languages beyond covers), but let’s just say that if you e Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, ever wanted to display Klingon along- you need, when you W Indic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean side Inuktitut and Amharic, Code2000 need it! scripts, all of which are “covered” by is for you.

the preinstalled fonts on your Mac or Another font you should download roup

Windows computers. is called Everson Mono. It covers G You could also install a lot of fewer scripts than Code2000—

Unicode fonts that cover all eventual including Armenian, Canadian AR possibilities. Sites like www.wazu.jp Syllabics, Cherokee, Cyrillic, ST shop.star-group.net have remarkable collections of Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin,

The ATA Chronicle n August 2011 31