The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice in Guarani, to offer the free office suite in yet another native language

Berlin, August 19, 2015 – Following the announcement of LibreOffice 5.0, The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the availability of LibreOffice in Guarani, the language spoken by 80% of the population in Paraguay, and the official second language of the country.

Guarani is spoken in parts of northeastern Argentina (Corrientes, Formosa,Misiones, eastern parts of the Province of Chaco, and at isolated points of Entre Rios), is the second official language of the Argentine province of Corrientes since 2004, is the co-official language of Bolivia, and is spoken in several cities of the eastern state of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil. Guarani is also one of the official languages of Mercosur (source: Wikipedia).

LibreOffice in Guarani has been be presented on August 13 at OEI (Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos) facilities in Asunción, Paraguay, to a selected audience. TDF and LibreOffice have also been presented in the Centro Nacional de Computación of UNA (Universidad Nacional de Asunción) in San Lorenzo Campus.

The localization to Guarani was carried by a single volunteer: Giovanni Caligaris. LibreOffice in Guarani is immediately available for download from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

“Back in 2011, I started discussing with the CIO of a Paraguayan corporation at the LibreOffice Conference in Paris, and we envisioned how to get the office suite in Guarani”, said Olivier Hallot, a founding member of TDF, and a LibreOffice advocate. “Unfortunately, the project stalled, until Giovanni Caligaris picked up the task, and managed to localize LibreOffice in Guarani in a rather short timeframe”.

“With the availability of LibreOffice in Guarani, Paraguay positions itself at the same level of more developed countries, and represents an incentive for countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia to conduct a localization project for their native languages”, said Giovanni Caligaris. “The next task is to increase the LibreOffice awareness in Paraguay, with the help of the LibreOffice community”.

With the addition of Guarani, LibreOffice gets closer to the vision of the founding members of the project, to bring the free office suite in their native language to 100% of the world population, to reduce the digital divide based on the familiarity with one of the languages spoken in the richest countries. Today, close to 90% of the world population can use LibreOffice in their native language.