ଏହା ଆଜି ଟାଇମ୍ସ ଅଫ ଇଣ୍ଡିଆ ବେଙ୍ଗାଳୁରୁ ସଂସ୍କରଣରେ ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ହୋଇଥିଲା ।:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Read-Bengali-Malayalam-cl…
(Copyrighted material that has been shared here for only reading purpose.)
ଏଥିରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଓ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର ବାବଦରେ କିଛି ତଥ୍ୟ ପ୍ରକାଶ ପାଇଛି ।
BENGALURU: It was a hunt that took Shiju Alex to many places. Finally, his
quest ended at Dharmaram College library in Bengaluru as Alex got hold of a
copy of the first-ever printed book in Malayalam. He scanned it promptly
and volunteers uploaded the text on to Malayalam Wikisource, one of the
free online libraries run by Wikipedia. Nasim Ali returned to Wikipedia
editing only because fellow Odias were reaching out on social media to help
upload the 13-volume Bhagavata Mahapuranam. Now, the entire work is
available for free at Odia Wikisource.
Actions speak louder than words when it comes to preserving books in
regional languages. Indian versions of Wikisource have more than 1 lakh
pages of classic epics, philosophical tracts, and novels and poems in 10
languages. And the numbers are growing. "These are the books that we grow
up with and connect emotionally. Most of us would like to see them online,"
said Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikipedian and programme officer at the Centre
for Internet and Society.
As Wikipedians come together in Bengaluru on Sunday to celebrate 15 years
of editing and curating the encyclopedia in India, more such stories will
be told. The growth has been tremendous in Indian language content
creation, especially when it comes to setting up Wikisources, said A
Ravishankar, programme director at the Wikimedia India chapter. Malayalam
has 26,332 pages, including around 200 of the seminal books in the
language. While Telugu has 29,039 pages, Bengali has around 11,000.
Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati and Assamese libraries
also getting bigger. The content ranges from religious texts such as
Ramayan and Bible to first-ever printed literary works.
"Most of these are books in the public domain or the ones relicensed with
Creative Commons licences. This allows anyone to edit or make a copy of the
work, making it reusable," said Panigrahi. Some of the relicensed works
include the Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by University of Mysore.
It isn't easy to get works online. Alex finds it difficult to procure the
original texts to create their PDF versions. "Every time I go to Kerala, I
look for old books," said Alex, who uploads the PDFs on a public domain for
others to upload them. Editors are also not easy to come by. Panigrahi took
to social media to find a new set of editors when he was trying to upload
the Bhagavatha volumes. "Wiki's volunteer-editors have their hands full. So
we appealed on social media and many people signed up," he said.
But the effort is worth it, said Alex. Every time he unearths an old book
and posts the link on his Facebook page, the reactions are full of
surprise. "Many from the younger generation don't know that Samkshepa
Vedartham (the first printed work in Malayalam) was printed in Rome. Also,
researchers write to me saying they are happy to see the old books online,"
he said.
STUDENTS PITCH IN
The Wikimedia Foundation has tied up with various colleges to help with
typing and proof-reading. Around 120 students of Kalinga Institute of
Social Sciences in Bhubaneswar typed stanzas from the Bhagavata while
Christ University students from Bengaluru uploaded chunks of the Kannada
Vishwakosha as part of their curriculum.
TECH HURDLE
Though the project started in 2006 with Malayalam Wikisource, it spread to
other Indian languages around five years ago. The biggest hurdle remains
technology as the open source optical character recognition (OCR) software
isn't compatible with many Indian languages. "Google's OCR that was
launched last year is much better as it works with most Indian languages,"
said Ravishankar. The new software "extracts text from images of any
printed text — and sometimes even handwriting, which opens the door to old
texts, manuscripts, and more," reads Panigrahi's blog post.
Subhashish Panigrahi
@subhapa
http://psubhashish.com
*Read my recent piece **about protests against Free Basics on Global Voices
<https://globalvoices.org/2015/12/29/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-free-basics-app/>,
op-ed in Odia newspaper the Samaja
<http://psubhashish.com/post/136609149720/free-basics>,YourStory
<http://odia.yourstory.com/read/3b6116b8ee/->,
Odisha.com
<http://www.odisha.com/archives/23402>, and Best of
Opensource.com:
Interviews
<https://opensource.com/life/15/12/best-opensourcecom-2015-interviews-open-source>.*