[Indic-computing-users] LINK: Project launched to make Bengali software a free download

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: 
Ashfaque Swapan
(510) 684-3479
ban...@ao...
Dr. Abdus Shakil
sh...@bo...

www.digitalbangla.org


(More contacts available upon request)

Project Launched to make Bengali Software a Free Download

BERKELEY, Calif. (Dec. 19, 2002) -- A California-based non profit has
launched the Digital Bangla Project (www.digitalbangla.org), a $30,000
fundraising campaign, on Dec. 16 to make what it calls "the best Bengali
word-processing software available" a free download by Feb. 21 2003,
according to a press release from the Berkeley, Calif.-based International
Institute for Bengal Basin.

"Free access to a word-processing software is critical for any developing
nation or society if it is to get on the information superhighway," said
Ashfaque Swapan, the California representative for IIBB. 

"With globalization, the entire world is getting wired. Today, no one really
uses a typewriter anymore. Information is collected, transmitted, archived
and disseminated through the computer. In addition, potential benefits like
Internet communication and e-governance will be completely inaccessible to
the vast majority in many developing nations if people cannot freely and
easily communicate in their own language on the computer."

IIBB is requesting 550 Bengali U.S.-based users to donate a little less than
the price of a software package, and with enough donors, the software will
become a free download.

"The beauty of donating for this project is that donors will ultimately get
a software that they now have to pay $55," he added. "The difference is,
everybody else will be able to get the software as well."

"All we are doing is taking the initiative to bring together 550 users and
BornoSoft," says the Digital Bangla Web site.

"The result, however, has profound implications: Bengali word processing can
take a quantum leap once the software becomes freely available. The greatest
single advantage of BornoSoft is its ease of use. You don't have to learn a
keyboard, which is the biggest handicap to the mass use of Bengali on the
computer. You just "type it in English," i.e., type the phonetic equivalent
of the Bengali words. So if you type "biggo" (wise), you get the Bengali
word."

According to an agreement between IIBB and BornoSoft, a Portland, Oregon.
-based U.S. software company, IIBB will raise the equivalent of sales value
of 500 software packages, and in return BornoSoft will make its word
processing program a free download, available to anyone in the world. The
software currently sells for $55 in the U.S.

"We are delighted to make Bengali software free, but we are more excited
about the fact that this software is a state-of-the-art, phonetic software
which can be mastered in an hour," said Dr. Rash Bihari Ghosh, the
Bangladesh-born chairman of IIBB. 

Ghosh, a U.K.-trained environmental scientist who worked for the California
Environmental Protection Agency before devoting himself full-time to IIBB,
said that mass access to Bengali and computer literacy was such an important
goal that IIBB embraced the project, although IIBB"s main thrust is
environmental research on the effects of toxics in the Bengal basin area
that straddles Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.

Already, U.S.-based supporters and donors from both Bangladesh and West
Bengal are joining in. Supporters/ donors include UC Berkeley economics
Prof. Pranab Bardhan, Thomas Jefferson Prof. Mashiul Choudhury, MD and UC
Berkeley sociology Prof. Raka Ray. In Bangladesh, Vishwa Sahitya Kendra
founder Abdullah Abu Sayeed has expressed his enthusiastic support for the
project.

BornoSoft, which already has a fair measure of popularity with Bengali users
in the U.S. as well as in Bangladesh, is different from more commercially
popular Bengali software in that instead of mastering a complicated
keyboard, the user simply follows a consistent transliteration system.

"BornoSoft has developed a simple, scientific and standardized
transliteration system and has implemented it on its program.  It takes only
an hour to learn, and it can be learned even without a computer," said the
software"s developer Dr. Abdus Shakil, a former faculty of University of
Minnesota and a medical doctor who has a Ph.D. in oncology and a diploma in
the Japanese language.  

"It is based on the structure of the transliteration system developed by Dr.
Suniti Kumar Chatterjee.  However, some major modifications became
inevitable, because no transliteration system in Bengali is consistent, and
yet for a word-processing software to work, that is an essential
requirement."

Shakil added that over 200 characters in Bengali in 300 + combinations to be
used on a computer, the best way to go was to follow what the Japanese and
Chinese do.  

These languages have thousands of characters in their scripts.  They have a
standardized, phonetic system of transliteration that they learn at
elementary school and use the it to type their languages on the computers,
which means these languages are typed in the standard Roman (English)
keyboard; the computer program converts Roman input into Japanese or Chinese
output.  

Similarly, the BornoSoft program uses only 26 lower-case English keys and
the accent key to represent all Bengali characters in a logical and
consistent way.

Swapan said that despite the increasing use of computers in Bangladesh and
West Bengal, the number of people who can use Bengali in computers is
appallingly low. 

"Look, let"s face it, nobody has the time or inclination to learn a new
keyboard," he said. "The result is that Bengali word-processing is largely
limited to professional typists or at best a few who do a lot of writing in
Bengali.

"This simply will not do. The world has changed. In the '50s and '60s this
was the case with English too, and only secretaries would type. Now
virtually everyone types his or her own documents. If Bengali users don"t
catch up, Bengali will pretty much become a lost cause in the digital age.

"If this becomes a free download, then Bengali software will move on to the
next stage," he added. BornoSoft is already ready to market applications
like spellchecker, one-click PDF facility and HTML text capability for Web
designers. Interested readers can visit the Digital Bangla

The project's fully bilingual Web site at www.digitalbangla.org.