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Pakistan: Internet and the challenge of language

Ivan Sigal — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:28:22 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

Pakistan today would seem primed for rapid growth in internet use. The country has had explosive growth of FM radio, satellite and cable TV set in motion by regulatory changes that allow non-state ownership of mass media. Cell phone use has also skyrocketed, with over 90 million subscribers. With a growing middle class that numbers some 30-40 million in a country of some 180 million people, Internet use should also see similar growth.

However, there are several constraints that mitigate that expansion, both structural, as in chronic electricity shortages, and social, particularly focused on language. Literacy hovers at around 50% in Pakistan, but while most people understand Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, less that 10% of the population speaks and writes it as a native. Provincial languages such as Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, and Balochi, as well regional languages such as Seraiki and Kashmiri are native languages for the majority of the population, and English is the official language of governance.

This language fragmentation has consequences for internet use. No one Pakistani language effectively serves both the reading and content creation needs of Pakistan’s netizens. As a consequence, English remains the popular choice online. In an interview, Adnan Rehmat of Intermedia Pakistan says that English is an “aspirational” language, a marker for education and access to resources, and because English provides access to a global linguistic community. Additionally, several regional Pakistani languages such as Punjabi are primarily oral languages, without strong literary cultures.

Fouad Bajwa, writing on Internet’s Governance, describes the problem further:

A key pressing issue with relevance to both the local Internet and Mobile Technology scenario in Pakistan has been availability of local content and making the local content widely accessible to the community at large across Pakistan and the entire world using a variety of currently available technology platforms.

There have been few concerted efforts to create Unicode fonts for Pakistani language scripts. Nastaliq, the popular font for Urdu, is not yet widely adapted in Unicode. Online writing in the main either uses an Arabic font, as with the relatively popular BBC and Google fonts, or it uses image files pasted into text.

There is not yet a broadly accepted font in use for either mass media of citizen media production. Many mainstream media still use image files, which requires that the text be composed on another platform, and discourages hyperlinking, as with a recent issue of the Daily Jang online.

Screenshot of Daily Jang ePaper, May 2010

The Pakistani government has provided little policy guidance for language use. In an interview Ahmad Shahzad of Bytes for All notes that the National Language Authority of Pakistan lacks resources, knowledge of digital issues, and a sense of urgency or policy priorities for Pakistani language expansion online.

There are a number of projects that have been working to fix this problem over the past decade. Perhaps the most comprehensive comes out of the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing, at Lahore’s National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences (CRULP). The Centre’s director, Professor Sarmad Hussain, has been working to support Nastaliq in Unicode since 2002. They describe their objective to ”conduct research for the evolution of computational models of Urdu and Pakistan’s other regional languages.” Their projects develop standard character sets, localize popular software and online applications, such as Microsoft Word, Firefox, and Open Office, and script processing for fonts that can support all Pakistani languages.

They are also working on optical character recognition and speech processing tools such as screen readers for the illiterate and blind users, and language processing tools such as spell checkers and machine translation. CMS platforms in Nastaliq, as well as mobile scripts.

Additionally, CRULP’s PAN Localization project is working to develop local language computing capacity in a dozen Asian languages, including Urdu, Pastho, and Bangla. The project seeks to develop tools to facilitate the use localization of advanced applications.

These scripts and their wider promotion, as well as the availability of content management systems in Urdu and language processing tools, has gone some way to making Urdu a functional language of content creation.

Other tools now available facilitate the shift from English to Urdu, including Google’s Urdu transliteration tool and the Dynamic Language Tools Bookmarklet, which supports transliteration of Urdu to both English and Hindi. Syed Ghulam Akbar, the bookmarklet’s creator, describes his motivation in a post on the Pakistani science blog STEP:

The main inspiration behind this tool development was not actually Urdu writing. In fact, there are many existing tools and applications which let users type Urdu either using a special keyboard layout or by using roman script transliteration. What actually inspired me to develop this tool was to provide a way to easily convert the roman content on all the existing web-pages to Urdu script so that it is more readable.

Together, the advancement of scripts, applications, and platforms in Urdu will go some way to advancing a culture of online production in Urdu. The relative lag in their availability does, however, highlight the general sense that English will continue to be the language of choice for many in Pakistan’s online world.

This lag can be addressed in several ways, including wide promotion of available tools and their application, support for both mass media and citizen media communities to discover, learn about, and implement creative use of these tools, and support to build bridges and networks among communities. For this reason, Fouad Bajwa is seeking to build an Online Urdu Encyclopedia:

It will create a converged environment overtime for presenting updated knowledge that is usable through reading, listening and visuals for both social and economic awareness, education, knowledge application in various fields, higher education, competitive exams, expert resources and endless Urdu language options.

At present there is no Urdu Wikipedia community, and few Urdu-language blog aggregators, such as http://urdublogs.co.cc/, capacity among mainstream media to produce searchable-text, Unicode-based online media, and a lack of mobile telephony platforms and applications for Urdu.

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

Pakistan: Urdu Transliteration Tool

Rezwan — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:23:47 +0000

Saeed at PakFellows blog discusses about the latest developments in the Urdu transliteration tools for ease of computing in Urdu language.

Pakistan: Sania Saeed And The Bloggers

Rezwan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:55:53 +0000

Some Pakistani bloggers (including Global Voices Pakistan Author Sana Saleem) met with renowned theater activist Sania Saeed to talk about her recent play Main Adakara Banun Gi. Read details about this in Jehan Ara's In The Line Of Wire.

Pakistan: Terror Hits Cricket!

Farhan Janjua — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:11:15 +0000

Today morning a dozen of gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team ahead of a cricket match with Pakistan team in Lahore. This bloody onslaught has left seven people including five Policemen dead and six Sri Lankan players were amongst the number of injured. The terrorists were armed with latest weapons including hand grenades, rockets, rifles etc. Luckily, there were no casualties among the Sri Lankan players and they are on the way back to their country.

I was in classroom when we heard the loud bangs of those firings. We got curious and started making speculations about what really was happening and one of my friends even passed on a joke as we carried on. But I was sensing that something is really wrong and something terrible has happened. After just five minutes I received an SMS from a friend and learned about the attack.

Everyone including our instructor got scared and he was kind enough to let us go. My University is just near the place of attack, Liberty Chowk. We could already see the traffic jam and a panic situation on the road outside my university. Rumors kept on coming from allover that there was a huge casualty in this attack, few said that Sri Lankans were also amongst them.

I immediately ran to the Internet lab hoping to watch the live TV streams about what had really happened. I was shocked to see the bloody fight between terrorists and the Police as SAMAA TV were airing the footage of the attack. I got relieved to know that Sri Lankans are safe, but at the same time, I was sad to hear about the casualties of the local Policemen.

For more details about my personal accounts, please go to my blog.

AlJazeeraEnglish uploaded the following video at YouTube including footage of the attack:

Naeem Sidhu breaks the news with the following words:

On Tuesday morning, our revered Cricketing friends from Sri Lanka were attacked in Lahore, leaving the whole nation embarrassed, shocked and with our heads shaken in disbelief. With the approval of the Colombo Government, SL team decided to tour Pakistan despite security fears and they courageously defied the advice by other Cricketing nations. India was more vocal against the tour by SL team. Due to our security lapse, Tuesday shooting has helped in vindication of their stance and has resulted in closing doors of International Cricket in Pakistan for many years to come – the worst set back to game in its history.

Yasir Imran tries to wake up the current government with these words:

یہ ایک انتہائی افسوس ناک واقع ہے، جو یقیننا پاکستانی کرکٹ کے لیے بہت خطرناک ثابت ہوسکتا ہے ، مگر حکومت وقت کی کچھ توجہ اس خطرے کو کم کر سکتی ہے، پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کو اپنے مفادات سے کچھ ہٹ کر اس قوم کے لیے بھی کچھ وقت نکالنا چاہیے کیونکہ بھٹو کے بعد سےپیپلز پارٹی کا کوئی بھی دور حکومت پاکستان کے لیے اچھا ثابت نہں ہوا، پیپلز پارٹی کے تمام ادوار میں مہنگائی میں اضافہ ہوا کرپشن بڑھی

“This is an extremely sad incident, that can certainly be proved as quite bad for Pakistani cricket. But the current government's attention can lower this danger. Pakistan Peoples Party should think beyond their own benefit, to spare some time for the nation because after the rein of Bhutto's Rule, none of the Peoples Party governments have been proved good for the country. In all of their governments, inflation and corruption has increased”

Pakistani Housewife blog expresses frustration:

What has happened to the world we live in? Is there an end to this madness? The situation in the world in general and in Pakistan in particular is getting worse everyday. These are the streets we walk in, the roads we drive on with our kids but nothing seems to be the same. I think these terror attacks kill a few people but terrorize the minds of hundreds and thousands of us. They make us numb, takes away the desire to live and the hope for a happy future is missing from our lives, in these terrible times.

Teeth Maestro says:

It is now certain that this tragic event marks the end of Cricket in Pakistan for sometime, the blame game with India is already nearing a frenzy, analysts like Kamran Khan on Geo and Hamid Gul have pointed fingers towards India already. One must note that the attack looks erringly too similar to the Mumbai attack but logically one must understand that this could very well be a cover up to instigate a war of words between India and Pakistan. Our politicians, intelligence agencies and media were blood thirsty looking for an excuse to kick back at India for the Mumbai assault and todays events in Lahore might serve them with an opportunity.

Kamran Abbasi at cricinfo summarizes:

The least of the consequences of this disaster is that those who have advocated the continuation of international cricket in Pakistan - including me - have been proved wrong. No international team will now visit Pakistan, and the Pakistan Cricket Board should voluntarily arrange all future tours at neutral venues for the next year, may be longer. This the darkest day in the history of Pakistan cricket and it occurred in a pleasant suburb of Lahore, a once great city of gardens and tranquility,