A few days ago, Mikel, from softastur, requested the creation of an Asturian team to translate Ubuntu. As I'm quite passionate about minority and minorised languages, I quickly googled around and mailed him to find out what the state of Asturian (ISO 639 code "ast") was.

While their webpage seems a bit stale, it appears they are trying to gain a bit of momentum by translating Ubuntu. They already have some Mozilla and other free Windows programs translated, but AFAIK, they had never started a plan to translate one of the two major free desktops, GNOME or KDE. If they are going to start a Ubuntu translation, that means we'll soon see a nice GNOME translation coming up, so that's pretty cool.

One of the problems I saw from the beginning is that even if they have an ISO 639 code assigned (albeit a three letter, 639-2 code, instead a two letter code, for which they pass the requisites even better than many other languages out there), they lacked a Glibc locale data file for Asturian. In an attempt to have Ubuntu Breezy's libc support Asturian as soon as it releases next month, I spent some time writing this data file for them, as I did in the past with the Aragonese (an_ES) locale. The result is cool:

                             2005

       xineru               febreru                marzu
ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do
                1  2      1  2  3  4  5  6      1  2  3  4  5  6
 3  4  5  6  7  8  9   7  8  9 10 11 12 13   7  8  9 10 11 12 13
10 11 12 13 14 15 16  14 15 16 17 18 19 20  14 15 16 17 18 19 20
17 18 19 20 21 22 23  21 22 23 24 25 26 27  21 22 23 24 25 26 27
24 25 26 27 28 29 30  28                    28 29 30 31
31
       abril                  mayu                  xunu
ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do
             1  2  3                     1         1  2  3  4  5
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10   2  3  4  5  6  7  8   6  7  8  9 10 11 12
11 12 13 14 15 16 17   9 10 11 12 13 14 15  13 14 15 16 17 18 19
18 19 20 21 22 23 24  16 17 18 19 20 21 22  20 21 22 23 24 25 26
25 26 27 28 29 30     23 24 25 26 27 28 29  27 28 29 30
                      30 31
       xunetu                agostu              setiembre
ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do
             1  2  3   1  2  3  4  5  6  7            1  2  3  4
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10   8  9 10 11 12 13 14   5  6  7  8  9 10 11
11 12 13 14 15 16 17  15 16 17 18 19 20 21  12 13 14 15 16 17 18
18 19 20 21 22 23 24  22 23 24 25 26 27 28  19 20 21 22 23 24 25
25 26 27 28 29 30 31  29 30 31              26 27 28 29 30

      ochobre               payares               avientu
ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do  ll ma mi xu vi sá do
                1  2      1  2  3  4  5  6            1  2  3  4
 3  4  5  6  7  8  9   7  8  9 10 11 12 13   5  6  7  8  9 10 11
10 11 12 13 14 15 16  14 15 16 17 18 19 20  12 13 14 15 16 17 18
17 18 19 20 21 22 23  21 22 23 24 25 26 27  19 20 21 22 23 24 25
24 25 26 27 28 29 30  28 29 30              26 27 28 29 30 31
31

This will probably go in the next revision of Ubuntu's libc, while I hope Denis Barbier will include it quickly in belocs for Debian. Eventually I'll submit to the glibc upstream list, but getting them accepted upstream takes a bit more usually.

Hopefully Mikel will find enough volunteers to complete this task soon enough. I dream that it'll help promoting Asturian, one of the most endangered languages in the Iberian Peninsula. Read more about Asturian in the Wikipedia.