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Keyboard Creation Service

Translation Commons is offering a free, volunteer-based Keyboard Creation Service for communities that wish to have a digital keyboard created for their language, where none exists today.

For more information visit the Keyboard Creation Project Home Page

Collaboration

We expect the language communities to collaborate with the keyboard developers in as many areas as possible in order to reflect the real-life needs of the language speakers:

keyboard layout requirements and ideas;
testing of prototypes;
feedback on usage;
engaging your language community in adopting the keyboards.
engaging your language community in adopting the keyboards.

Language Data

The involvement of linguists, language advocates, (local, governmental or non-governmental) community organizations ensures that the design adequately reflects your language and culture. Our experts will guide you in collecting language data requirements and provide training on keyboard implementation. 

Our developers will need details about the writing system and linguistic elements, such as the characters, symbols, digits, letters, punctuation marks, and diacritics used in writing. Ideally, the language should have an ISO code and its script encoded in Unicode. To be able to display and print the characters, there should be supporting fonts.

Open Source

The resulting keyboard will be open-sourced and publicly available under MIT license, unless otherwise indicated. We do not accept projects to create keyboards for sale or commercial purposes.

Keyboard Creation Request Form

To make a request for a keyboard, fill out this online Keyboard Creation Request form. This questionnaire aims to gather information about:

the language community (e.g. regions where spoken, number of speakers, language experts and supporting organizations), and 
the language mechanics (e.g. writing system, characters, writing samples, current status of keyboards, etc).

Please fill out as much as you can. We will work with you to address any unanswered questions.

For questions regarding keyboard development or assistance in developing your own, please contact us at
[email protected]