[lg policy] Pakistan: Only right people can develop Urdu language: Dr Durrani

[Harold Schiffman]

Only right people can develop Urdu language: Dr Durrani

By Manzoor Qadir

ISLAMABAD: The government should select right people with vision to
prepare a group of linguistic experts the way experts are groomed in
other fields, if it is genuinely interested in the development of Urdu
language, said Dr Attash Durrani, the founder and head of Urdu
Informatics Project at the National Language Authority (NLA).

Talking to Daily Times, he said, “We have been preparing experts for
business, commerce, industry, science and technology, but not for our
national language. This task could not be completed with the literary
figures heading the departments and authorities mandated to language
development, now the government should take on board the language
experts.”

He opined that only literary meetings and seminars would not serve the
larger cause of Urdu language development, but the country needs to
work hard on scientific bases. “Only this way we can see our national
language standing tall with other international languages,” he said.

Durrani, who will retire from service on April 23, is the author of
several books and dozens of research papers. He has devoted his life
for research and to make Urdu a forceful language serving the students
and researchers in all spheres of knowledge and information.

“If we are genuinely interested in the Urdu language development we
need to have a national language policy based on the scientific
language survey instead of meaningless deskwork,” he mentioned.

“We have restricted Urdu language since ages to only literature that
is not more than five percent of the entire language, and have ignored
95 percent of the language body,” said Dr Durrani, who has been the
flag-bearer of Urdu language planning, development and management for
over four decades. He has served the National Language Authority for
30 years.

Dr Durrani, who has paved the way for exploring the synergy of the
language, believes that the nation needs the Urdu linguistic experts
to further the progress in Pakistani Urdu, Technical Urdu and Urdu
Informatics and Urdu Terminology Science.

“I have contributed what I can do to set the tone for Urdu language to
take it beyond a communication source for literature. I have the pride
to play a key role in initiating the Urdu informatics that has made
possible data processing in Urdu, and keeping up the Urdu dictionaries
and thesaurus, books and other documents online accessible for the
Urdu users and researchers across the globe,” said Dr Durrani while
highlighting his most valuable addition to the Urdu language
development.

He was of the view that the authorities assigned for Urdu language
development should concentrate on language planning, including its
script and terminology development, thesauri building to nomenclature
of science and technology, and to add 95 percent of knowledge body to
the language from the excluded subjects.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\04\22\story_22-4-2012_pg7_15

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