New Delhi, September 08, 2009: Thiru A Raja, Hon'ble Union Minister for Communications and IT released a set of Software Tools and Fonts for six Indian languages, namely Bangla, Konkani, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Manipuri and Santali for free public distribution at a function jointly organized by the Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) programme of Department of Information Technology (DIT) and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), an autonomous Society under DIT, today.
Dr. Debesh Das, Minister in Charge, Department of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal was the guest of honour.
Present on the occasion from Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT were Shri R. Chandrashekhar, Hon'ble Secretary, Shri R. C Misra, Additional Secretary & Financial Adviser, Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Jt. Secretary and Group Coordinator (TDIL), Smt Swaran Lata, Director & HOD, TDIL and also Shri Rajan T Joseph, Director General, C-DAC.
The release is part of a National initiative by the DIT, MC&IT to proliferate the use of Indian languages in Information Technology. Earlier, Software Tools and Fonts for Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Assamese, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Bodo, Dogri, Maithali and Nepali have also been released as part of this initiative.
The release of these Indian language CDs is a major milestone for the Ministry of Communications and IT in it's endeavour to bridge the digital divide in the country. Enabling Indian citizens to access technology and knowledge in their respective language will help overcome the language barrier that has been at the root of this divide as well as provide a platform for preservation of our existing culture and creation of new content. Today Information Technology has become a yardstick for gauging a nation's development and role of language technology has become prominent.
Speaking on the occasion, Thiru A Raja commended the role of TDIL Programme & C-DAC in this National initiative, and said, "I am very happy to have realised the dream of developing the IT tools in all the 22 constitutionally recognized Indian Languages. Language technologies being developed under Technology Development for Indian Languages Programme of the Department of Information Technology will go a long way in safeguarding the rich cultural heritage and also enhance the future growth of nation by making larger population of the country participate in the economic development of the society".
Dr Debesh Das, Chief Patron of SNLTR- a society under the Government of West Bengal, lauded the initiative of the Union Ministry of Communications and IT in the roll-out of software tools and fonts for all the 22 official Indian languages and said that "The initiative will accelerate the adoption of Information Technology among the masses. What seemed hitherto out of reach will now be available in the language of the people, and is sure to provide a boost to Indian language literature". Baishakhi Linux CD developed by SNLTR was also released at this function.
Shri R. Chandrashekhar, Hon'ble Secretary, DIT opined that, "Language Technology is a vehicle for inclusive growth in society as it is the most powerful tool to bridge the digital divide. Our endeavour of bringing out the free Language CDs for all 22 constitutionally recognized Languages is a step in this direction. The total number of downloaded and shipped CDs in sixteen languages is approximately 48 lakhs so far. Tens of thousands of these CDs are also being shipped to NRIs, which shows the capabilities and usefulness of the tools provided. It will also boost interest penetrating Indian languages and catalyse and complement the growth of e-Governance".
Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT welcomed the release of language CDs and said "The localized Open Office, Fonts and Content Management Tools provided on the language CDs will help in generating more Indian Languages content on the internet which not only will disseminate the local knowledge but also will become a test bed in the development of futuristic technologies such as Cross Lingual information Access, Search Engines for local languages etc. TDIL Programme, is also focussing on development of futuristic technologies and services such as, Machine Translation, Cross-lingual Information Access, Speech Technologies for Human Machine Interface and host of other technologies. Consortium Mode Projects involving 31 premier academic institutions."
Smt. Swaran Lata, Director & HOD, TDIL programme, DIT threw more light on the Indian Language Computing Initiative – National Roll-out Plan for the 22 Official Indian languages and commented "Under TDIL programme, we are working towards a wired world which overcomes the English barrier and the National Roll Out initiative is a first step in this direction. We are also working on internationalization issues of World Wide Web (w3c) standards towards futuristic and interoperable web technologies. The tools provided on these CDs are Unicode complaint and easy to use which will have multiplying effect on the creation of multilingual websites. Language technology is the backbone of Indian economy and promises a great hope for the export looking software industry to start looking at local markets leading to a domestic IT boom by building customized and localized IT solutions. Now this project has to go beyond the technology development goal and couple it with initiatives of other Ministries and State Governments in percolating the use of these tools to reach the wider segment of the society."
Addressing the media, Shri Rajan T Joseph, Director General, C-DAC said, "it is a momentous occasion for C-DAC to have successfully released the 22 official Indian languages. We are thankful to the Department of Information Technology for their faith in our competency and the opportunity to implement such a large-scale National initiative. Making IT available in local languages is imperative to ensure that benefit of this revolution reaches the common man and the pervasive nature of ICT offers enormous social and transformational impact on the daily lives of the common man. We hope this unique programme will help accelerate widespread adoption of applications through desk-top, laptops, and Internet in a convenient and friendly way by the masses".
Shri M. D. Kulkarni, Programme Coordinator and Head, GIST, C-DAC, Pune shared his experiences of the project and stated, "The entire concept of making available the software tools and fonts for the 22 official Indian languages has been a challenging responsibility to our entire team. The seriousness of our efforts and the relevance of our hard work can only be measured by the acceptance of the software tools and fonts by our fellow citizens, who are already benefiting from our previous releases. We do hope that the current release will serve as a much needed elixir to the cause of multilingual computing and reaffirm our commitment".
The tools include True Type Fonts (TTF) with Font Driver, UNICODE compliant Open Type Fonts (OTF), Keyboard Engine for TTF, UNICODE compliant Keyboard Driver, BharateeyaOO.o, Firefox browser, Multiprotocol Messenger, E-mail Client, Dictionary, Spellchecker, Generic fonts code and storage code converter, and so on.
The released Software Tools and Fonts CDs for the six Indian languages and also 16 languages CD released earlier can be procured by registering at the Indian Language Data Centre (ILDC) websites (www.ildc.gov.in or www.ildc.in ). The Software Tools and Fonts can also be downloaded from these websites.
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