Web browser Mozilla Firefox is now available in South African language isiXhosa, thanks to global language service provider Rubric.

isiXhosa is South Africa’s second most widely spoken language after Zulu with 16 million speakers according to Statistics South Africa.

Meanwhile, Firefox is the world’s second most popular web browser after Google Chrome, say W3schools.com figures.

The Firefox browser, which is developed using an open source model, already has software packs for South African languages such as Afrikaans, Zulu and even Venda.

And isiXhosa speakers now have this luxury as well, thanks to Rubric translating 30,000 words contained in the Firefox browser into isiXhosa and donating the language pack to the open source community.

“Google Chrome and Internet Explorer already exist in isiXhosa, but an advertising duopoly is not a good thing for diversity,” Ian Henderson, Rubric chief technology officer, has told ITWeb Africa.

“Our effort is to get isiXhosa to as many people as possible without having to give away personal details which get hovered up by Google and Microsoft in order to target their adverts more closely,” Henderson has explained.

To download the Firefox Xhosa language pack, click here and navigate down to the relevant link.