[Wikimediaindia-l] Supporting the languages of India

[Ravishankar]

Ashwin,

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur at gmail.com>wrote:

> The aggressive/offended tone in a couple of posts on this thread
> distresses me. I humbly request that all respondents may please tone down
> any agression you may feel. Gerard is trying to understand Indian culture
> in good faith. He has made some assumptions that he is keen to explore. May
> I request that we please discuss maturely without getting offended? We need
> to not only AGF but be CIVIL also. The same points can also be made
> politely.
>

Every time there is a difference of opinion, some one starts this be CIVIL
message. I don't feel anything un-CIVIL in anyone's message. So, please
don't distract the TOPIC.

Srikanth,

//You need to work with someone who knows the language to the purest of its
form, knows it in and out, and also knows technology. I doubt you'd've come
across MANY of those at either WCI or the Hackathon.//

While I agree with your view that even people not well versed in one
language can donate their technical skills, it is important that the
project as a whole takes in to account the views of people who know the
language well.

For example, a year back a wrong proposal was sent to Unicode consortium
that wanted Grantha script being encoded in Unicode but at the expense of
damaging Tamil language in long term. The Central Government passed it to
Unicode consortium and it was about to approve it. Only at the last moment
could we intervene and after months of discussion and wasting precious
hours by both Sanskrit scholars and Tamil scholars + Technocrats, the
proposal was held. If only Unicode consortium or Central Government had
asked for the opinion of learned scholars of language, this situation could
have been avoided. So, while lack of proficiency in a language need not be
an impediment for technical contribution, we should not assume that it is
enough for projects of varying nature.

Ravi
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