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centres for Indian Language Technology Solutions (RC_ILTS) which cover 10
languages. We are proud that Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation
Studies, University of Hyderabad, is one of the major centres in India where
tools for machine translation for Indian languages (IL-ILMT project) are
being developed. Today software packages are available for machine translation
from one Indian language to another (for 14 languages), spell checks, on-line
bidirectional and multidirectional electronic dictionaries, Hypergrammars,
morphological analyzers, text-to-text, speech-to-text, etc. Both Central and
state governments are actively implementing ICTs, as a result such important
domains like health, education, tourism, public services, etc. are made available
on-line. The Central government has also established (and some are at planning
stage) centres for Indian language Technology and Resources (ILTR) which
“would coordinate with state IT department and language departments for
providing the inputs feedback on technological issues such as localization,
etc.”; Community Information Centres (CICs) – to bridge digital gap between
urban and non-urban areas; common service centres (CSCs) – to provide
internet access to rural citizens. A significant contribution to the emergence of
networking in the country was made by the Education and Research Network
(ERNET). National Informatics Centre (NIC) was also established under the
Department of Information offering services such as corporate communications,
Internet/Intranet emerging voice communication, multimedia, broadcast,
distance learning, etc. It should be mentioned that all these services are not
always in local languages. However, the government committed to make
them available in major Indian languages as early as possible. In addition to
governments’ efforts some MNCs like Microsoft, HCL technologies, Google
services etc. and National companies like TATA consultancy services, etc. are
seriously engaged in developing a variety of software tools for Indian languages.
However, there is still a lot of work to be done. For example, translation is
yet to get industry status (Prabhakara Rao: 2001). Language studies should
be encouraged as it is crucial for language industry and language engineering.
Much remains to be done in localization of software. Both Central and State
Governments should more seriously be committed for implementation of
regional languages in all domains.
References
1. Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in the Information Society. Paris:
UNESCO, 2003 (I-2004/WS/3).
2. Deshpande, Madhav M. Sociolinguistic Attitudes in India. A
Historical Reconstruction. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers Inc., 1979.
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