Kannada

Google India paid local companies/agencies to test and use their Indian language translation tool. The platform they chose was Wikipedia.

What happened next was disastrous. Especially on Kannada Wikipedia.

Rumors spread that "You get paid for writing on Wikipedia". The regular  contributors felt discouraged as they continued to contribute as volunteers while others, the translators commissioned by agencies were getting paid pretty well.

Google was actually paying the agencies, translators who used their translation tool to translate articles from English Wikipedia to the Indian language projects.

A rather rare photo that has ShishunaLa Shariff and Govinda Bhatt. I captured this from a photo at poet H S Venkateshamurthy's place.

Note: The quality of photo ain't that good.

Going by the description on the photo, ShishunaLa Shariff is the second one from right - last row.

Of late, whenever anyone throws a question asking which place (city) I'm from, there isn't by any means a ready answer. The confusion lies in the fact that I haven't lived for long in any place that I could call my home town and that I've lived major part of my life till now in the city of Bengaluru! Yes, I was born in Davanagere. The city famous for its Dosa and cotton mills. I was brought up in the lovely fort city of Chitradurga. Rocky hills, ponds and the truly mesmerizing channels of harvested rain water running into ponds that always made us wonder how the city even got into facing scarcity of water. It is said that a British officer who visited Chitradurga fort was quite relieved that they did not have to fight to win it. The historic fort is said to have been impenetrable.

[Background: Kannada, like probably many other Indian languages, has seen its days run out completely as the primary language used to store, record knowledge. It may have been due to several factors, but back to local view of the world: local news, local language, local perspectives and everything local has now been catching up. Even FM radios in the city have switched back to the local language as the primary language of broadcast. Well, is it time the local language is also used more and more to document knowledge? and to think back about those aspects of knowledge that stays beautiful when written in local language, the aspects that make people more comfortable with it to sit back and listen, or grab a book or news paper to read. Whatever is, people thronging in the local language communities on-line or otherwise would have certainly observed this change of discussing certain aspects of technology, science or software (that make their presence felt in everyone's lives) in local languages just because the conversations happen effectively.
Localized software, support for languages on software has added up to this. These are most definitely good signs for that large mass of rural students who are primarily educated in local language and for those people who are more at comfy with their mother tongue. Since this percentage of population who are more at ease with the local language is more in the rural areas, towns and smaller cities, it becomes even more important to log technology, science or the basic knowledge surrounding it in local languages to spread it across the state, create awareness about the sea of change that is sweeping each day with new technologies, concepts and innovations.
A good instance would be going about creating awareness about free software (free as in freedom) and the alternative it provides for a free world and about how the rural India could benefit from it.]

It *is* a challenge to reach out to people from our own community, an informal community bound by a common factor - the language surrounding which we grew up. Although we were let down by numbers in terms of how many participated in the discussion, we had some excellent discussion about 'Writing Technology, Science in Kannada". The focus was obviously on using Internet to do that and gradually taking it from there to elsewhere, where Internet reach is minimal. The discussion happened at Center for Internet and Society, Cunningham Road on Sunday, 29th.

Sampada Foundation
in association with
Center for Internet and Society

invites you to...

Discussion on:

• Kannada, standards in technology and Internet
  - writing about Software, related technologies and free alternatives. Creating awareness, sharing know-how.
• Effective use of Technology, Internet:
  - writing Agriculture, Water, Science and Technology in local language.

Participating with us on that day: Nagesh Hegde, NAM Ismail and Sampada Tech Team.

10.30 AM - 12.30 PM, 2.00 PM - 4.00 PM
Sunday, 29th of March, 2009

Venue:
The Center for Internet and Society
No. D2, 3rd floor, Sheriff Chambers,
14, Cunningham Road,
Bangalore,
Karnataka 560052
India
Phone: (+91)-080-4092-6283
Fax:(+91)-080-4114-8130

You can confirm your participation by writing to us at:
mail@sampada.net

or call us at:

080 40926283

For more details, get in touch with us on the same number.

'Nira Nischinte' (ನೀರ ನಿಶ್ಚಿಂತೆ) or loosely translated - 'Peace of mind with Water' is the slogan we chose for the Kannada version of Water Portal (which is funded by Arghyam), and also as the title of the event we planned surrounding it. We just had the third edition of the 'Nira Nischinte' event at Tumkur yesterday. The first one was at Dharwad, the second at Mangalore.

It is quite an interesting event considering that not many people in general take interest in issues surrounding Water. Here, we have had passionate people attending the event, in good numbers that too, which is quite surprising really. We have had people learning how to share information on-line, and more importantly about doing so in *local language*. It has made up a rather unique event and the name has caught up already! And the discussions we have had until now has been excellent.

In general, many discussions just end up with complaints, but no solid initiatives towards solving the problem. Although water issues affect everyone, they always end up being perceived as "somebody else's problem" and go without being addressed properly. Most often than not, public authorities are blamed. The day to day situation on water is something that people have got "adjusted" to, rather than trying to improve it. Whether it is to prick the public authority to do their jobs properly or to take up simple initiatives on their own (like Rain Water Harvesting), not many seem to have enough motivation or intent. And all this, I note down from my interaction over a significant amount of time, and having been the same myself earlier.

You get a feeling that the intent is now changing when people discuss the issues even when having their lunch (!) and seeing them cover that extra distance discussing "what could be done about it"!