Since June 2014, more than 100 programmers have contributed to an open source Mandarin Chinese translation of Swift, the in-house programming language Apple uses for iOS development, reports Bloomberg (http://tinyurl.com/ox4wr7j).

Designed for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, Swift — which debuted last summer — combines the performance and efficiency of compiled languages with the simplicity and interactivity of popular scripting languages, says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.

A round of finishing touches was added to the Mandarin Chinese tranlstion last month, making it easier for 850 million native Mandarin speakers to build iOS apps. The project’s originator is Jie Liang, a student at BeiHang University in Beijing, who wrote in a celebratory blog post that he began translating Swift to "synchronize China and the world," says Bloomberg.

The next version of Swift (version 2), Apple’s programming language, will be open source. Federighi says it will be the “next big programming language” for 20 years to come. Swift provides a single