Colours native computer

There is an ufolding technological tragedy in the Subcontinent which has its source in our inability to use new information technology because of the language barrier. This retards social and economic growth drastically, but there seems little concern in each of the South Asian countries and regions.

The English-speaking upper crusts of South Asia are mostly computer-literate, and this gives them (us, reading this magazine) the false sense that the machines are in use all over, in business, publishing, administration, education, household use, and so on. In fact, only a tiny fraction of computer-aided number crunching and data retrieval is a reality in South Asia. You have to know English to be able to sit before a computer, which immediately takes computers out of reach of more than 95 percent of South Asians.

Until computers can be brought down from the rarefied elevations of English-speaking South Asia and into the ´vernacular´ gullies and mohallas, they will continue to remain hightech toys. The price of hardware is falling and costs are no longer the barrier they once were. The real obstacle is language.

This issue of Himal focuses its cover on the matter of ´localisation´, making computers more accessible to South Asians in their own languages. Many South Asians who are able to afford and use computers cannot do so because they do not understand English and its "qwerty-yuiop" keyboards. As far as Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Oriya, Sindhi, Tamil or Urdu are concerned, they may as well not exist in the world of informatics.

Yes, it is possible to type in these South Asian languages and, up to an extent, do layout and design and bring out newspapers and books through desktop publishing. But this is just a fraction of what the computer is capable of. Computer applications beyond typing and layout are out of reach of most South Asians who do not have English. This is unfair.

It is important that the "transition economies" of South Asia be able to adopt and adapt all technologies from around the world to serve the needs of our own economies and societies. In Europe, North America and East Asia (the "West"), the use of computers and communications has become integral to the way enterprises, and even households, work and acquire their effectiveness and competitive advantage. Information and records can be archived and used for future planning. Data processing in the computer promises, in every sphere of life, enormous advantages by ensuring accuracy, speed and flexibility. Regular administrative and clerical activities are automated.

Once, it was easy to say "but we cannot afford this technology". Large numbers of people will indeed remain outside the digital curtain because of cost and illiteracy, but millions of South Asians – small businessmen, grassroots activists, bureaucrats and administrators at district level, and school teachers, accountants, overseers and reporters all over – are today ready to use computers. Their jobs require it. But they, too, remain outside because they lack English.

To involve the population at large in the use of information technology, information technology must work in the language of the ordinary users of that technology. In the immediate case, it is much easier to move the technology to work in the language of the local population than for the population to acquire the appropriate level of competence in English.

It is not sufficient, therefore, just to involve the English-speaking classes where computers are concerned. Neither can you simply transplant solutions from the West and expect them to succeed; considerable amount of local adaptation of both the methods of the transition economy and the methods embedded in the information technology must take place to bring them together. This process of adaptation can be viewed as a process of appropriation, transforming the technology from an alien artefact to one belonging to the local culture, empowering the local culture through its presence. This cannot be done in a language foreign to the culture, but requires that everything to do with the culture becomes expressed in its language and symbols.

This movement to make the technology work in the local languages, or ´localisation´, is relatively easy to achieve, and affordable. However, localisation in South Asia so very often does not happen – and not only in computers. In this issue, Himal looks at the problem from two angles. Kenneth Keniston studies it from a broad cultural and political perspective, and raises serious questions about the national and commercial interests involved. Patrick Hall surveys the technology and the languages of South Asia, and ends up raising similar questions. Is the future of information technology and how it is used in South Asia to be determined by the interests outside South Asia, or is it time that South Asians took control of this technology by insisting on its availability and use in the languages of the region?

Readers are familiar with the C:>, or the "c-prompt", which greets the computer-user upon turning on the machine. There are many levels of course in which computers can be localised, but perhaps total success will have been achieved when we are able to introduce the Devanagari sa:> or the Arabic sa:>.in place of the Anglo-Saxon symbol.