The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : ‘Many Tamil scholars are yet to realise the power of computers and Internet'

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Monday, Jun 28, 2010
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Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

‘Many Tamil scholars are yet to realise the power of computers and Internet'

Karthik Madhavan

There is a need to convince them that Tamil computing is not a mystery

COIMBATORE: It pains to note that many Tamil scholars are yet to realise the power of computers and Internet, says T.N.C. Venkatarangan, Chair, International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT).

“While attending an academic session at the World Classical Tamil Conference, I saw a scholar pen a poem within a couple of minutes and after reading the same, throw the paper.

Power of Internet

It would have been nice had the gentleman used the power of Internet to post the same on a blog,” he says.

“Imagine if the 6,000-odd scholars were to post a poem each on the Net. We will be richer by 6,000 Tamil poems. This is what the Ninth World Tamil Internet Conference aims to accomplish.”

INFITT has worked alongside the Tamil Nadu Government in conducting the Internet Conference.

“INFITT wants to reach out to scholars and say that Tamil computing is not a mystery.

It is not for the tech-savvy or the rich. It is for each of us,” he says and adds that it is important because they are content provides.

“They are the ones who can contribute, who can write, pen poems, etc. We guys can only provide the technical support,” Mr. Venkatarangan says.

In the past couple of days this has been accomplished to an extent because participants of the Classical Tamil Conference have walked in to see what is happening.

“A scholar in his 70s asked me for the freeware given by the Ministry of Information Technology to mail in Tamil. Similarly, very many people attended the session on Tamil weblogs,” he says.

At the inauguration of the Conference, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology A. Raja released a compact disk containing freeware for the use of Tamil in computers.

It is important to inform the scholars also because, publishing is difficult and has become a costly affair.

“By understanding the basics of computers and the Web, the scholars will be able to publish their works free of cost and also enjoy a global audience.”

The second aim is to take Tamil computing to students. “Not many are aware that using the existing keyboard they can type in Tamil. And, being the next generation, it is out duty to tell them.”

Mr. Venkatarangan says the Conference has also brought together technical people, who are able to share what they have done in linguistic computing.

Projects

A lot of them are doing various projects, which if shared in such an event will pave way for lot of things.

At present the challenge before the Tamil-loving technical community is to make the machine understand Tamil through ‘Natural Language Processing.' “For this we again need the Tamil scholars, because they are the ones who understand how the language works,” he points out. He says he is happy that the Internet Conference has brought together a lot of people to work together.

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