[tamil] Tamil Conference - News brief in Economic times
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Sunday Jul 30 2000
Updated 0239 hrs IST 1609 EST
Casting their net
Aruna Srinivasan
THE TAMIL Diaspora abroad is as community savvy as any
other from any
part of India. And what is better evidence of this than
the Tamil Internet
2000 conference held in Singapore recently?
Organised by the Tamil Internet Steering Committee, the
third such
conference and exhibition on Tamil Internet - and the
largest to date -
drew about 20,000 visitors and some 300 participants
between July 22 and
24.
The 35,000 strong crowd that gathered for the conference
from the world
over, belied the impression that this was all about
computerizing the
Tamil language. On the contrary, it was a huge networking
exercise out of
which no Tamil speaker would be left out.
Says Arun Mahizhnan of the Institute of Policy Studies, a
Singapore based
think tank, and cochairman of TISC, “Those who are
involved here are
professionals in different fields. Creating Tamil
software applications gives
them ample challenge.”
A leading Malaysian proponent of the Tamil Internet,
Muthu Nedumaran
explains the evolution of the Tamil Internet in three
stages. First, was the
curiosity to put Tamil on the computer. Then followed
computerized
Tamil in print. And today the print element is also
disappearing, replaced
by web based communication.
``Today we are looking at using the language in
technology and
enterprise; and in as many applications as possible. All
the while we
evolved the Tamil Internet on the basis of the English
internet evolution.
Now the time has come to look at what is unique to Tamil,
and explore
avenues to make Tamil computing a powerful communication
tool.”
It all began in the US and Canada, where the Indian
diaspora put Tamil
on the computer. But it resulted in several developers
coming out with
their own versions of Tamil software. The result was
chaos. Because, unlike
English there was no single code by which Tamil could be
encoded and
used in the computer.
When the Tamil print media went online, each publication
used different
software. And the confused reader would have to download
different
software for each newspaper or magazine he wanted to
open.
This created the need to speak in a single language.
Leading to the first
ever Tamil International Symposium on Internet in 1997,
which discussed
standardization of keyboards and uniform coding. This was
followed by
another conference in Chennai and now in Singapore.
The main issues in this conference? Says Dr M
Anandakrishnan, Tamil
Nadu State Council for Higher Education, and co chairman
of the
International Conference Committee, “The encoding methods
agreed
upon in Chennai are an integral part of Tamil computing
today. Even
those who don’t adopt them today will have to change in
the future if they
don’t want to be left behind. It is a question of
mindset. But it takes time
for those who already have a huge amount of information
in their
respective softwares. Asking them to change overnight is
not fair. We can’t
force anyone to adopt changes. Conferences like this will
help the process
of change.”
While the conference hub discussed core issues, the
community hub
focused on roping in public participation by holding
exhibitions and the
E-business hub focused on e-commerce and enterprise. The
sessions
included expert advise on setting up start-up companies
and allaying
apprehensions about e-commerce. Like how to tackle the
issue of mistrust
in online trading. Singapore’s system of awarding
certificates of quality
with a stamp of “Net Trust” was advocated.
“Developing E-commerce in Tamil will help those in the
rural areas who
are not comfortable with English. What we are planning is
a bi-lingual
software and giving the users an option.”
Says V Suresh, CEO, SR Singapore Ltd, a software
developer and net
solutions provider. “According to research, online
business was about $43
billion in 1998. The projected figure for 2004 is $6.8
trillion. The
non-English speaking Tamil community should not miss this
huge
potential of net trading and e-commerce.”
Over the years Tamil on the net has evolved tremendously.
The users
views also differ. If Rajeswaran Boopalan, an avid Tamil
Internet user is
unhappy with the Singapore conference for not arriving at
any solutions
says “What to do. We still cannot read a great number of
publications
because of different encoding systems,” Shubhashini, a
school teacher
says, “I don’t perceive any great problem. We can have
more than one
software, with different encoding and use them as per our
need.”
Solutions happen where one seeks them. Even as the
Singapore
conference worked its way through technical consensus on
several issues, it
successfully instituted a forum called International
Forum for Information
Technology in Tamil in which members from all the
countries will be
involved in the 5 working groups. Decision making will
thus be a
continuous process, and these will be carried on to the
next Tamil Internet
conference which Malaysia has agreed to host.
By and large the developers are happy with the outcome of
the
conference. “The conference has given more importance for
Tamil
Glossary and forming new Tamil terms(words). It is a
great foundation for
Language localization and E-Governance,” says Anto Peter
of Softview
Computers, one of the key developers of Tamil softwares.
“I am very positive about our discussions. Issues like
Standardisation are
always there. We cannot wait for all the contentious
issues to be solved. In
technology, 2 years is a long period. So, even as the
issues are being
sorted out, we have to keep moving ahead with taking the
technology
further.” says Muthu Nedumaran who developed the widely
used Murasu
Anjal Tamil word processor.
That is the bottomline. Many developers have already been
using
different systems and a great amount of data has already
been in use or
uploaded on the net using these different coding systems.
It is not easy to
abandon them and migrate to one system overnight.
Meanwhile, however,
the business of reaching out to the masses through Tamil
Internet should
keep moving on.
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