PAN Localization

A Regional Initiative to Develop Local Language Computing Capacity in Asia

 

 

 

The International Development Research Program (IDRC), Canada, through its Pan Asia Networking (PAN) program

 

and

 

National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Pakistan, through its Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP)

 

 

are pleased to announce their initial three-year partnership in a South and South-East Asia wide initiative to build capacity in regional institutions for local language computing. 

 

While Asians have become the largest group of Internet users by the end 2001, they barely form 4.5% of the region's total population. The region's diversity of languages makes information in the English language largely inaccessible to an overwhelming majority of under-developed rural Asian populations that do not speak and write English.

 

Investment has gone into developing the ICT infrastructure in Asia, but the persisting digital divide attests that the path towards providing connectivity and technology infrastructure alone would still not enable a majority of population to benefit from the current availability of information.  What is required is to enable the large under-developed populations of Asia to access and publish content in the languages that they speak and write in, on a daily basis.  Access equates to providing local language computing framework and tools to ultimately translate and display this information in the languages spoken by these large potential users. Publishing content means using these tools to generate information in the required local languages. Inability to do computing in local languages is a major obstacle to providing universal access to information and learning, both basic human rights.

 

The PAN Localization Research Project has three broad objectives:

 

·         to develop sustainable human resource capacity in the Asian region for R&D in local language technology

 

The human resource pool in most developing Asian countries needs capacity-building to become skilled in enhancing the existing technology to support their Asian languages. 

 

  • to raise current levels of technological support for Asian languages

 

Asian languages are in some aspects much more complex than English, some with very complex writing systems. The current technology, initially developed to support English, does not completely support the requirements of many Asian languages and needs to be developed.

 

·         to advance policy for local language content creation and access across Asia for development

 

Few studies examine local language problems to devise and recommend effective policy framework to address problems related to accessibility and publication of relevant content through ICTs and devise short-term and long-term solutions. 

 

The scope of the PAN Localization technology research includes development of character set, collation and other language standards, fonts, lexica, spell checkers, grammar checkers, search and replace utilities, speech recognition systems, text-to-speech synthesis, machine translation. The Project will assess both Linux and Microsoft platforms for these specific application developments. Different aspects of localization technology will be addressed, including linguistic standardization, computing applications, development platforms, content publishing and access, and effective marketing and dissemination and intellectual property right strategies of the output products.

 

As the PAN Localization Project will research into problems and solutions for local language computing across Asia for development, it is designed to sample the cultural and linguistic diversity in the whole region.  The spread of the research will be carried out by the various countries at strategically different research entry points along the research spectrum, with each country conducting research that is critical in terms of the applications that need to be delivered to the country’s user market.

 

The Project will also build an Asian network of researchers to share learning and knowledge and will publish research outputs including a comprehensive review at the end of the Project, documenting effective processes, results and recommendations.

 

The countries (and languages) included in the Project are Bangladesh (Bangla), Bhutan (Dzongkha), Cambodia (Khmer), Laos (Lao), Nepal (Nepali) and Sri Lanka (Sinhala, Tamil).

 

The implementers of the Project are ICT researchers, practitioners, linguists and policy-makers from government agencies, universities and the private sector.  In addition to PAN and CRULP, the following are the participating institutions in this Project:

 

Bangladesh:      BRAC University           

Jahangirnagar University

 

Bhutan:             Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information and

                        Communications

                        Dzongkha Development Authority, Ministry of Education

                        Sherubste College

 

Cambodia:         The National Committee for Standardization Khmer Script in

                        Computers, The National Information Communication Development

                        Authority (NiDA)

 

Laos:                Science, Technology and Environment Agency (STEA)

National University of Laos (NUoL)

Institute of Linguistic Research

 

Nepal:               Madan Puraskar Pustakalya

University of Kathmandu

Tribhuvan University

 

Sri Lanka:         University of Colombo School of Computing

 

This region-wide Project initiative will particularly benefit non-English speakers in rural Asia who form the digitally-divided populations of the region. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CRULP was founded in 2001 to do linguistic research, help develop computing standards, develop script, speech and language processing applications and utilities to promote the development and access of local language content for Pakistani languages.  NUCES is a private university, which offered the first Computer Science program and is a leader in IT research and education in Pakistan. 

 

For further details, please contact:

 

Dr. Sarmad Hussain

Associate Professor and Head

Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP)

National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES)

B Block, Faisal Town,

Lahore, Pakistan

 

Phone: +9242 111-128-128

Email: sarmad.hussain@nu.edu.pk

URL: www.crulp.org

 

 

PAN promotes socially responsible ICT application and innovation in developing countries, especially for deprived communities, through participatory and applied research in Asia.  PAN examines the impact of ICT Project interventions on people, livelihood, culture, gender and conducts research into how they impact on the economy and society as a whole with policy-relevant studies.  IDRC was created in 1970 by the Parliament of Canada to help developing countries develop an indigenous research capacity to sustain policies and technologies they need to build more equitable societies. 

 

For further details, please contact:

 

Ms. Maria Ng Lee Hoon

Regional Senior Program Specialist,

PAN Asia Networking (PAN)

Regional Office for Southeast and East Asia

International Development Research Center (IDRC)

30 Orange Grove Road, #07-01

RELC Building, Singapore 258352

 

Phone: +65 6235-1344

Email: mng@idrc.org.sg

URL: www.PanAsia.org.sg