Dear All,

Below one news about Bengali Wikipedia in Today's Telegraph

Now you can log on to Wikipedia for help on your Bengali assignments as well. Adda or jonaki, Rabindranath or nesha, you can find a range of subjects in the Bengali Wiki.

“The Bengali Wikipedia was launched in January 2004. At present Wikipedia is available in 273 languages, out of which 20 are Indian. Bengali was the third Indian language in which Wikipedia was made available,” says Jayanta Nath, administrator of the Bengali Wikipedia. The archive boasts of both English articles translated into Bengali as well as articles written by the team just for the Bengali archives. To access Wikipedia in Bengali, the user has to type “bn.” instead of “en.” before Wikipedia in the address bar.

Because it is not just translation and has its own group working on the content, the Bengali Wikipedia has an independent character and identity. But while the English Wikipedia has 3.6 million articles, the Bengali site has only 22,000 articles. “Our strengths are famous personalities from Bengal, Bengali literature and Hindu religion,” says Nath. The user base is also considerably lower compared with the original English online encyclopaedia — 0.1 million against 1,000 million. “There are about 150 active contributors to the site from places like Bangladesh, West Bengal, the US, UAE and other places,” says Nath.

The users are not always impressed. “I have checked out the Bengali Wikipedia. I find the articles in English more detailed. Plus, Bengali Wikipedia follows a very bookish Bengali, not the way we speak it. It is difficult to follow,” says Saikat Bhattacharya.

An entry on Chokh (eye) in Bengali Wikipedia reads: “Chokh pranir alok-songbedonsheel anga o darshanendriya. (The eye is a living being’s photo-sensitive component and visual organ.)”