Africa Must Put Its Own Languages On the Internet

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Africa Must Put Its Own Languages On the Internet

http://allafrica.com/stories/200507150244.html

Africa Must Put Its Own Languages On the Internet

Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)

July 14, 2005

Rebecca Wanjiku
Luxembourg

Africans who wish to see their own languages on the
internet have to make a concerted effort to develop
the necessary applications. They should not wait for
donor support to finance the use of local languages
through the use of Internationalised Domain Names
(IDNs)

Norbert Klein, an adviser to the director of the Open
Forum of Cambodia says it is possible for Africa to
develop language scripts without depending on donor
support especially in areas that use existing language
scripts such as Arabic.

Internationalized Domain Names seek to recognise the
distinct African languages and characters without
necessarily encoding them into English.

This means that it will be possible to use IDNs in
African languages with characters other than those of
the English alphabet.

"Development of a script is a long process that goes
step by step. First local communities must identify
the common words to be used. Some people use different
words to mean the same thing. It must be agreed
through analysis, what words cut across the board.
That may or may not need donor support," says Klein.

IDN in Africa is still in the nascent stage. Experts
are studying how to go about the multiple languages in
the region, whether to start with the easily available
script or the widest spoken albeit with a different
script.

According to Michael Everson, a consultant
typographer, work has already started for the design
of alphabets used in various languages. He is
currently working on design of N'KO script mainly used
by Mande speakers in Mali and Guinea.

In this respect, Klein feels the Cambodian experience
will be of immense importance to Africa since the
process has been locally driven by students and
experts who drew up comparative tables of the widely
used words and developed a common table that was
acceptable across the board.

"We have learnt a lot of lessons; mainly that
developing software is different from popularising it.
But the first step must be taken. Communities must
come together and decide what words to use," says
Klein.

Cambodia had more than its fair share of confusion
when people based in the US, Canada, and Australia
among other countries compiled twenty different
language scripts. Unfortunately the scripts were so
different from each other that no two were compatible.

This, he said, forced Cambodia to go back to the
drawing board and design a script that was
internationally acceptable. After 18 months of hard
work, the ministry of education contacted the Open
Forum with a view to developing local open source
software for local schools.

"The education minister launched a three year plan but
it was in English. We enquired why such a plan would
be in English yet not everyone in the provinces could
read and write English. It is then that the minister
consulted us on how to develop the plan in Cambodian,"
adds Klein.

Once an organisation or community's domain name is
registered, the language can be encoded and a
dictionary developed to allow registrars, world wide,
to pick it up and install on local servers.

The Unicode standards are defined by a consortium
based in the US but with representatives all over the
world. Africa is represented by the Agence
Intergouvernementale de la Francophonie.