The purpose and objectives of the RADIC project led by Jamk are related to the development of digital rehabilitation and its education in East Africa. The project partners include several East African universities and the target group is East African rehabilitation professionals. Therefore, it was necessary to produce the main content of the project not only in English but also in Swahili, which is a significant language in the region.
Oskari Villanen, the project's communications specialist, says that it was a technically demanding project.
"We had a huge amount of content that had to be built sensibly on the website. When the English version was ready, work began on the Swahili version," Villanen describes.
The translation work was carried out in cooperation with East African partners. Although Villanen does not speak Swahili himself, he was responsible for the technical implementation of the content on the Drupal platform. The translations were delivered to him as numbered Word files, and a Swahili version of the digital manual was built on the basis of them.
"I practically worked blindly by comparing the English version and the translations. Google Translate and ChatGPT were a big help, but it took several days," he says.
Jamk's website platform did not originally support the Swahili language. Adding the language package required technical changes and a license fee, but in the end, a solution was found in cooperation with Exove, the company responsible for the technical maintenance of the website.
The Swahili version is technically a bit narrower than the Finnish and English language packages. Navigation from one language to another is also not automatic, and the user needs a direct link to access Swahili content.
The new language translation project and its expansion as part of the website is a significant opening. It shows that Jamk is able to serve an increasingly diverse audience and engage in truly international cooperation.
"Now that the language package has been added, it is available to everyone at Jamk. In the future, this will enable the production of content for all projects with Swahili-speaking partners and target groups," says Kaisa Jokinen, Project Manager at RADIC.
See here what the Swahili content looks like on Jamk's website.
