Language localization as a movement in India

[Harold Schiffman]

Posted by egovindia on June 21, 2006

Localization as a movement in India
by Rajesh Ranjan

A few days back, a famous writer from Kannada, India, U R Anantmurthy,
mentioned in an interview that languages are the repositories of
culture. The importance of enabling this culture of languages to not
merely survive but flourish in this digital age cannot be understated.
If a language is not becoming part of digital advancement then the
language will become outdated and endangered and in some cases might
even become a thing of the past. End of a language means end of a
culture. Thanks to the free software ideology and contemporary open
source development methods that have given a new lease on life to many
different languages, no matter how small we are, we now have the
potential to fix this fundamental issue. Free and open source
software, unlike other bureaucratic processes, enable each individual,
including you, to contribute toward enabling local language computing
and thereby expediting the process of adoption of technologies enabled
by computers in rural India. We all can cherish Mahatma Gandhi's quote
"Whatever you do will be insignificant but it's very important that
you do it." That is why the free software movement enabled by
collaborative peers in the community is of paramount importance here.
It is a fact that proprietary groups cannot afford to fulfill the
needs of the masses, especially in an economy with limited purchasing
power, but we in the community of open source computing can rise to
the occasion.

In India, so many groups are working to have their languages enabled
on computers. "Localizing free software for a free country" is the
slogan of IndLinux, a major and popular group having enormous success
with this work. IndLinux is a group of people who believe, not so
surprisingly, that the benefits of information technology must be
widely and freely available to the Indian masses. They are a group of
people who combine skills in written scripts, free/open source
technologies, and technology journalism to make this happen.

This organization has inspired so many new groups to come forward to
work together. Punlinux is one of the most successful examples. Within
two years, this group has localized an enormous amount of content in
Punjabi, a vibrant language and culture of India. Everything from
Fedora(R) to GNOME to KDE to OpenOffice and all! A great success story
from an organization based in rural India! None of the Punlinux
members has any urban base! Mix of love for language and open source
has produced unbelievable results like this one example. There are
several other efforts being made to Indianize Linux(R). One major
effort, Ankur, is a collaborative initiative aimed at bringing Bangla
to the FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) desktop. The core
objective of Ankur is to make available a completely localized
GNU/Linux OS and they have received notable success in this field.

Open source contribution of Utkarsh in giving the power of computers
to the Gujarati speaking populace is also immense. It is one of the
most professionally managed organizations. IndianOSS is another one
committed to the cause of Gujarati computing.

Tamil has several active communities.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/zha is one of the major efforts.
TAMIL-LINux is another group involved in the development of Tamil on
Linux/Unix. The BharateeyaOO project is an initiative to bring
OpenOffice to India in Indian languages by the ICT Research and
Training Centre (India). It is being done as part of the activities of
the Development Gateway Foundation. Project Malayalam for the
Malayalam Package offers a set of macros and fonts for typesetting
Malayalam, which is the primary language of an estimated 33 million
people in the South Indian state of Kerala. The Linux in Oriya project
is the initiative for making Linux available in Oriya. The GNU/Linux
Telugu Localization Effort aims at localizing most common applications
on GNU/Linux to Telugu including GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, and OpenOffice.
Swathantra Malayalam Computing at present is focusing on
translating/localizing GNU/Linux GUI into Malayalam. Swathantra
Malayalam fonts is a sub-project of Swathantra Malayalam Computing.
Their aim is to make enough free (Swathantra) Malayalam fonts. Indic
Trans also works in the field of Linux localization in Indian
languages. The Indic-Computing Project is providing technical
documentation for Indian language computing issues.

There are several more names: Kannada Localization Initiative works
for Kannada language and Thamiz Linux is yet another effort from the
Tamil language. Free software localization in Assamese works for
Assamese, MarathiOpenSource works for Marathi language, Swecha is a
GNU/Linux Telugu localization effort for Telugu language, and
http://thamizha.com encompasses multiple projects such as localization
of Firefox and OpenOffice among others. A project has even started for
minority languages like Maithili, which is spoken in a particular part
of a state of India and was incorporated in the schedule of the
constitution of India in recent years. It is a fact that in some
projects, the pace of work may not be as rapid, but the above examples
show there is great awareness and response towards transparent and
collaborative open source localization and its methodology.

If the subcontinent of India could be described in a single keyword,
diversity would be it. There are about 500 languages in India in which
22 of them are considered official. It's easy enough to imagine the
situation merely by knowing that in a small country like Nepal there
are more than 50 languages. Sooner or later these smaller languages
can hope to go hand in hand with information technology but only
through the free software philosophy. The localization movement in the
neighboring countries of India has also started. The language of the
mountains of Gorkhali, a.k.a. Nepali, has only 1.6 million speakers. A
group working with Madan Puraskar Pustakalay has shown a significant
momentum in the field of localization in Nepali language last year.
This group has completely localized the Gnome desktop. Dzongkha,
sometimes called Bhutanese, is the national language of the Kingdom of
Bhutan. The goal of Dzongkha Localization Project is to incorporate
Dzongkha script into Linux to enable computing in Dzongkha to provide
the benefit of information and communication technology to the
Bhutanese masses. This project is implemented by the Royal Government
of Bhutan and is being funded by International Development Research
Center (IDRC), Canada, through its Pan Asia Networking (PAN).

The Sinhala Linux Project is another project to localize Linux in
Sinhala. This was started by Lanka Linux User Group (LKLUG). The PAN
Localization Project has a broader reach. It is a regional initiative
to develop local language capacity in Asia. This organization is
working for the following languages: Bangla, Dzongkha, Khmer, Lao,
Nepali, Pashto, Sinhala, and Urdu. Generally, dominant languages
suppress minority languages. But in the case of Punjabi in Pakistan it
is different. In Pakistan, Punjabi is spoken by the majority but the
government there does not seem to support this language. So Punlinux
has planned to start the localization of Punjabi in Shamukhi script
and already filed an enhancement request to create a separate locale
for it. This can only be possible in the world of open source! Just
like a democracy where every person is equal, in the eyes of open
source, every language can be made equal in computing!

Localization of open source software is a transparent and
community-driven process. That is why it is easier to customize the
software according to local needs. Sometimes, due to cultural
differences, people may not be comfortable with western user
interfaces. But the difficulty does not stop there. Imagine the
struggle of the typical rural Indian to understand metaphors like
folders and recycle bins! You might as well as speak Greek, no offense
to the friendly folks from Greece. It is particularly true in the case
of a major language like Hindi and languages like Bengali and Punjabi
that are spoken in two different countries that the whole language is
basically split into different zones in two neighboring countries.
Hindi is spoken and understood by more than half of the Indian
population and has innumerable dialects. In the open source
environment, it is easier to modify things according to specific needs
irrespective of the profit-loss theory so very typical of the
proprietary world. The open source model is not only helping to
achieve the local need but also maintains respect for the local
emotions. For example, Bengali is now divided into two separate locale
(bn_BD and bn_IN) in Fedora and Mozilla after the demand from the
community. Basically, localization in open source alone has the power
to represent futuristic language computing.

The contribution of Red Hat making the localization effort successful
and lively is enormous. By selecting five Indian languages (Hindi,
Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi and Gujarati), Red Hat has given great impetus
to l10n and i18n works related to Indian needs. Working on a computer
with local languages was never so easy. Red Hat launched Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and Fedora in those five Indian languages and
localized them at not only the application level but at the operating
system level also. Red Hat is going to launch similar efforts in eight
more languages: Assamese (as), Kannada (kn), Malayalam (ml), Marathi
(mr), Oriya (or), Sinhala (si), Telugu (te), and Urdu (ur). This is
enough to demonstrate Red Hat's compassion and commitment to India and
its local language computing industry.

The President of India, Abdul Kalam once said, "In India, open source
code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit
of our billion people." In a poor country like India where per capita
income is much lower than the average, words of our president and
visionary Mr. Kalam should be an important bottom line. These
localized computers will be very useful in the field of rural
computing. The people of real India only speak their native languages.
For them, English represents the language and culture of British
domination and exploitations. In analyzing why radio and television
has a deep-rooted impact in India, especially in the rural areas, we
can understand that the main reason is the availability of television
programs produced in local languages. The localization movement in
India has made 'alien' computer 'desi' one–hamara computer, tumhara
computer. The Local Language IT market is in a development stage and
it is rising with exponential growth. E-governance is one major field
where localization of software is a must. The cost of hardware is
going down very fast and in this context, the future of localized open
source software is great.

Last year the government started a program to launch localized CDs in
all 22 official languages. Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu language CDs have
already launched. Many of the applications available on the CD were
released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This is a success
story of the localization movement in India. The initiative has been
funded by the Indian government. It has planned to distribute 3.5
million copies of the Hindi Language CDs after the popularity. IndiX
is a project funded by TDIL working on Indian language support for
Linux. CDAC, a government organization, has also done important work
for supporting open source software localization.

There are many people and several organizations in India that support
the open source ideology. A strikingly unique example of this is the
establishment of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya
(Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University) in 1997. An eminent
Hindi poet and former Secretary in the Ministry of Culture of India,
Mr. Ashok Vajpeyi was the first vice chancellor of the university and
he made the decision to run the university completely on open source.
During his tenure, two books (in Hindi) and a bilingual magazine (in
Hindi and English) were published completely on open source
technology. Having open source computer based technology which works
in a native language, particularly in Hindi, was the main target of
the university. (On the website it is still the same!!) It is
unfortunate that the situation hasn't been so positive after the
completion of his term!

The Delhi-based non-profit organization Sarai is fully committed to
the use, propagation, and development of free software. Sarai has
played a key role in the localization of some of the Indian languages.
According to Sarai, free software emerged as a democratic alternative
to proprietary control over code. Sarai has encouraged so many people
to engage and enlarge this domain by giving fellowships and having
several workshops.

The work of localization started long before and now it has taken the
form of movement. Internet availability, lack of resources, and
illiteracy are some hindrances in the path of local language
computing. The major hurdle is the mentality of the English speaking
elite who sneer at the local language computing efforts. The elite
have not had any grass-root experience, but they are still controlling
the major positions within administration and finance. But ultimately
they have to stumble down against the force of the local language
computing market. Two decades ago, the condition of the television
industry was similar to the present computer industry in India.
Positive changes are inevitable and also not very far off in the field
of computers.

Poet Mr. Ashok Vajpeyi once wrote that the Indian tradition of
selfless distribution of knowledge is very old and universal. We can
say that the free software movement is the western version of the old
Indian tradition. Mr. Vajpeyi's statement is very right and so, in the
long term, Indian soil will prove itself very fertile for open source
software. "Where knowledge is free" was the dream of Nobel laureate
Rabindranath Tagore for his nation and now the time is moving ahead
toward his dreamland

About the author
Rajesh Ranjan is Language Maintainer, Hindi at Red Hat. He is working
with several localization projects including Fedora, GNOME,
Openoffice.org, and Mozilla. He is the Indic Language Co-ordinator for
the Native Language Confederation of Openoffice.org. Before joining
Red Hat, he worked with The Indian Express Group and Literate World,
Inc.

http://egovindia.wordpress.com/category/localization-of-languages/
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