The year 2005 witnessed a major initiative of the Government linking people through Indian Language Technologies by releasing software tools and fonts for Indian Languages such as Hindi, Tamil and Telugu followed by release of 7 more language CDs for Assamese, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi and Urdu in January, 2007 and with the commitment to release such CDs in the balance officially recognized Languages by March, 2008 through National Roll Out Plan Project being implemented at C-DAC, Pune. In view of the social impact of the IT Technology on the life of the people and to bridge the digital divide being created, the Govt. of India enabled all the citizens of the country to receive the benefits of the Information Technology revolution through making the CDs available for free use by downloading from the websites http://www.ildc.in & http://www.ildc.gov.in and also getting the CD on request through these websites.
The CDs contain Basic Information Processing Kit (BIPKs) which includes localized Bharteeya Open Office, Fire Fox Browser and E-mail Client, Open Type Fonts, Keyboard drivers etc. The CDs also include tools like Spell Checker, Dictionary, Code Converters, Typing Assistant, Language Learning Tool, etc. & some of the lab scale technologies developed under TDIL Programme such as Machine Translation systems, OCRs etc. for feed back and improvisation
This has been achieved through contributions of research efforts undertaken through TDIL Programme and various contributions by the Public and Private players, academicians, R&D and Industry.
This issue details out the contents of the Language CDs for which a large user base has already been created in the country and these have been very well received by the social community. This initiative will go a long way in bridging the digital divide which to a larger extent has also been created by the language technology barrier.
(E.K. Bharat Bhushan)
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