[Fsf-friends] Localization as a movement in India (Rajesh Ranjan)

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/015jan06/features/rhindia/

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become outdated and endangered and in some cases might even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® 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®. One major effort, the Ankur Bangla Project, is a
collaborative initiative aimed at bringing Bangla to the
FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) desktop. The core
objective of the Ankur Bangla Project 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.