Gurudath Bantwalkar, Hariprasad Nadig to Attend World Wikipedia Conference
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (FR)
Mangalore, Jul 28: Gurudath Bantwalkar and Hariprasad Nadig of Sampada fame have been selected for presenting a paper during the Annual Wikipedia World Conference, Wikimania-2011. The conference is scheduled to be held at Haifa, Israel, from August 4 to 7 and Gurudath and Hariprasad who co-authored the paper have been invited by Wikipedia to present their paper on August 6 during the morning session.
The title of their paper is “Resolving a conflict with the help of Technology: Konkani Wikipedia, Enabling Inter-Script Transliteration”. Gurudath, who is the Asst Director at World Institute of Konkani Language, at the World Konkani Centre is an active Wikipedian. He has written several short stories and poems both in Konkani and Kannada and has also presented research papers about Konkani language and Culture and other related issues at various seminars and conventions. He was also instrumental in launching several online initiatives of the World Konkani Centre.
Hariprasad Nadig is an active Wikipedian, SYSOP and is associated with Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia. Nadig had started Sampada.net in 2005, which has now emerged as one of the largest internet portals in Kannada. He has also served as a member in Chapters Committee of Wikipedia Foundation.
Abstract of the Paper Submitted
Usage of multiple scripts in Konkani language has hindered the sharing of knowledge between the communities that speak the same language but are separated by the usage of script. Moreover the conflict over the usage of script in some official situations has created a rift in the language community. Groups are at loggerheads and the language is losing its ground in schools mainly because the focus of the activists is shifting to upholding the script of their choice than popularizing the Konkani Language, especially in Karnataka State. Since a considerable amount of literature has been created in some of the major scripts, people who are comfortable with one script are opposing the other script to agree on a common script.
In the advent of Internet, technology has enabled an accessible knowledge sharing platform for Indian languages through Unicode. Presently the ability to ‘Search’ in Indic scripts as well as the ability to do ‘Transliteration’ and ‘Translation’ for the Indian language content has enabled more avenues.
An initial effort to create a Konkani Wikipedia lost its momentum due to the script conflict. It was a real obstacle for the users to create four different pages in four scripts for each content page without which the content created in the language would limit itself for the specific region where the script is in use. Hence Konkani language Wikipedia is still at the incubator stage.
Desirable Solution: A system which can allow user to create the content in the script of his/her choice and allow another user to read the same text in another script of his/her choice is communities that are facing similar situations, is the need of the hour. An extension for Media Wiki to transliterate between scripts would contribute to resolving a major conflict among Konkani speaking communities and few other Indian language language communities which are facing a similar issue.