[Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : The Hindu : "Two Wikipedians to attend Wikimania meet in Israel"

[CherianTinu Abraham]

Just a note, the headline is slightly misleading. The reporter confirmed
that it is not she ( reporters generally doesn't have that privilege) who
wrote the heading.
-TC
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*The Hindu : "Two Wikipedians to attend Wikimania meet in Israel"*
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2318227.ece


*They will seek support for Konkani transliteration tool they are developing
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*RELATED **PHOTOS **Gurudath Bantwalkar and H.P. Nadig*
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*Two Wikipedians, Gurudath Bantwalkar and Hariprasad Nadig are on their way
to Wikimania 2011 in Haifa, Israel, from August 4 to 7. At the annual global
meet people will share their experiences with free knowledge initiatives.*
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*Mr. Bantwalkar, Assistant Director, Research Wing, World Konkani Centre,
Mangalore, and Mr. Nadig, a Bangalorean IT professional are attending the
meet to get support from the international community of Wikipedia software
developers on a Konkani language transliteration tool they are developing.
At present the “extension” or a software add-on enables Konkani speakers to
read in their preferred script.*
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*But they want Konkani writers to contribute to Wikipedia in their scripts,
and have readers writing in their preferred script, said Mr. Nadig.*
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*The add-on runs on Mediawiki, the software on which Wikipedia is based.*
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*The tool is still theoretical and details have to be worked out, for which
they are seeking help from the community of Wikipedians. But they are
confident that it can be done successfully. If all works well, it can help
other languages with multiple scripts such as Kashmiri and Santhali at home,
and Serbian and Chinese abroad.*
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*The aim was to create a transliteration tool for Konkani, spoken by people
across states and read in several scripts including Roman, Devanagari, and
Kannada.*
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 *The Konkani wikipedia never got off to a start due to differences in
scripts and did not get any contributions. With this tool, many writers from
all communities could write for Konkani Wikipedia.*
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*“The idea behind developing the tool is knowledge sharing, to ensure the
community does not split because of different scripts,” said Mr. Nadig.*
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*“We have tested the tool on Wikimedia but it is still very theoretical. We
have to do more research on it. But we intend to gather support for it. It
cannot be done by one or two engineers, it requires community
participation.” Mr. Bantwalkar said their paper would focus on two issues.
One, on the multiple scripts in the Konkani language.*
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*Two, the need for a technological tool to change content from one script
into another.*
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*“Though Serbian and Chinese Wikipedians are using similar ideas, we can't
use the same (software tools). But we can tweak it and adapt it for
Konkani,” he said.*
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*The software tool needed help from the international community for the
details. Wikipedians use their own software (Wikimedia). “We need software
development experts from the Wikipedia community to help us,” he said.*
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*“It is a political issue. Every community argues for their script. Each
community wants to write in the script that it is comfortable in. However,
that may not be in the interest of the language, which should have free flow
of content that can be read by all people. This tool will benefit writers,
readers, and publishers of the language,” said Mr. Bantwalkar.*
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*Of 250 to 300 papers submitted, 125 were selected for the meet. Their paper
is one of three papers selected in the “multilingual” category. “It is a
distinction,” he said. *
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Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#Aug_2011
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