LANGUAGE WORKSHOP on Hindi / Urdu / Kashmiri Localisation in IT at Sarai-CSDS, Rajpur Road - 7th & 8th March 08

Event Details : The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF), and Sarai, CSDS, have decided to enter into a collaboration with the broad goal of making computing facilities available to people in Indian languages, thus empowering them to access information and work in their native tongues. As the development paradigm in India shifts towards an emphasis on knowledge driven through information technology, computing in Indian languages becomes increasingly important for the flourishing of hitherto marginalised languages and cultures, and their inclusion in the emerging economy. A key aspect of Indian language computing is localisation, i.e., the process of translating the user interface of software applications into Indian languages, thus making it possible to make full use of them without knowing any English. Towards this end, RGF and Sarai, CSDS, have jointly funded fellowships for localisation of free/open source software (FOSS) into languages including Assamese, Hindi, Kashmiri, Oriya, and Urdu. Typically, such a localisation effort covers at least twothirds of the applications included in a FOSS desktop, working out to the translation of about 40, 000 phrases, or of nearly 3, 00, 000 words. While the Hindi translation is quite advanced, localisation work is just commencing in Kashmiri and Urdu, and is at an early stage in Assamese and Oriya.

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