Only 5% of Asia's population understands a foreign, Western language such as English. The other 95% collectively speak, read and write any number of the 3,500 languages extant in Asia. Since its inception, the Internet has been dominated by content and user interfaces designed in English. While a number of steps have been made to diversify languages on the Internet, much work remains before the Internet becomes a truly multi-lingual and multicultural medium. As a result,  adequate access to telecommunications networks and information are not the only problems facing Asia's marginalized communities - they are seriously hampered by technologies and content that are not localized to their native languages.

The Project: How does this initiative address the development problem?

Phase I of the PANL10n network (www.panl10n.net) focused on building human capacity in R&D and technological expertise in areas such as input/output standards (rendering and encoding character systems), localized applications (office productivity suites) and associated issues relating to lexicon and text processing (algorithms relating to grammar, spell-checkers and sorting). The languages covered in Phase 1 were: Pashto (Afghanistan), Bangla (Bangladesh), Dzongkha (Bhutan), Khmer (Cambodia), Lao (Lao PDR), Nepali (Nepal) and Sinhala & Tamil (Sri Lanka).

This phase, the second phase of the PANL10n network, has been scaled up to include Mongolia, Pakistan and Tibet (China). In addition to encompassing more national partner institutions in the fields of technology, policy, linguistics and social sciences, this phase will further strengthen its technology R&D capacity, research challenges and opportunities facing content production and consumption (both technical and policy-related), as well as explore open source alternatives mobile phone applications. Intellectual Property (IP) licensing particularly with respect to Content will be addressed with a commons perspective.

The manner in which these technologies are adopted and used by various user groups and communities is a key research focus in this phase of the project.  Outcome Mapping (OM) and Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) are among the tools to be used in analysing behavioural change in different user communities, while contributing as a technology case study to the methodological work of integrating OM and GEM into ICT4D projects.

Objectives:
The general objectives for this project include:

• To examine effective means to develop digital literacy through the use of local language computing and content
• To explore development of sustainable human resource capacity for R&D in local language computing as a means to raise current levels of technological support for Asian languages
• To advance policy for development and use of local language computing and content
• To study and develop coherent instruments to gauge the effectiveness of multi-disciplinary research concerning the adoption of local language technology by rural communities

Development Impact
As the project has not yet started, its development impact cannot be assessed at this time.

Outputs

CBC Podcast

All publications and materials related to this project will be listed here as they become available.

Key Words*

INTERNET | LANGUAGE BARRIER | ASIAN LANGUAGES | INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY | COMPUTER PROGRAMS | SOFTWARE ENGINEERING | INFORMATION SOCIETY

* All terms are drawn from the OECD Macrothesaurus 1998.