'ICT dividends must be taken to the village in Sinhala and Tamil'

“If the dividends of ICT are to be taken to every village, every citizen…’ it had to be done in Sinhala and Tamil”. said ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) Board Member and Local Language Initiative (LLI) Chairman Dr. R. B. Ekanayake. He was participating in a multi-pronged launch that at Jaic Hilton, Colombo recently

Dr. Ekanayake pointed out an important imperative for the filfilment of a goal in the ‘Mahinda Chintana Vision for the future’ ‘If the dividends of ICT are to be taken to every village, every citizen…’ it had to be done in Sinhala and Tamil, Dr. Ekanayake said. Explaining the rationale for the LLI Dr. Ekanayake said: “Most people in Sri Lanka use Sinhala and Tamil. Most are not conversant in English.

English is necessary but learning a foreign language takes time. The ICTA Local Language Initiative (LLI) therefore had to be implemented immediately after ICTA’s commencement”.

The ICTA Board and LLI member Prof. Vijaya Kumar, ICTA Board member and LLI Chairman Dr. R. B. Ekanayake, Professor J. B. Disanayaka, Telecommunication and Information Technology Ministry Secretary Nimal A. Athukorala, ICTA Chairman Prof. P. W. Epasinghe, Sri Lanka Standard Institution Director General Dr. L.N.Senaweera and ICTA CEO Reshan Dewapura

In the recent past several projects have been completed under ICTA’s “Local Language Initiative” and the Wednesday event was held to launch the following:-

a. The third revision of the Sri Lanka Sinhala Character Code for Information Interchange which has been approved by SLSI as a Sri Lanka Standard, SLS 1134 : 2011. This version includes encoding for Sinhala numerals. This is to be launched in partnership with the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI).

b. Six new stylised Sinhala fonts have been designed by the trainees who underwent ICTA’s font development training. – there has been resistance from various sectors towards using Unicode fonts citing the fact that only “serious” Unicode fonts were available. Now several Unicode Sinhala fonts of different styles have been developed.

c. A new Unicode Tamil font ‘Sri Tamil’ .
d. Six new stylized Tamil fonts - “Chemmoli” series.
e. A book on how to develop Sinhala and Tamil fonts.
f. A keyboard driver for using Apple Mac with a Unicode Sinhala font - Mac Bhashitha.

At present using Unicode Sinhala and Tamil is the norm. Local language content is being created. Nearly 300 Unicode compliant trilingual government websites are now available. There are other numerous sites providing assistance and information in Sinhala and Tamil, such as, www.subasa.lk People are now registering domain names in Sinhala and Tamil under the top level domains.

Certificates to font developers and tokens of appreciation to Local Language Working Group (LLWG) were presented.

The present LLWG members Dr. R. B. Ekanayake (Chairman), Prof. V. Kumar, Dr. Ruvan Weerasinghe, Channa de Silva, Prof. Gihan Dias, Ms. Dineesha Ediriweera, Mr. G. Balachandran, Dr. Sandagomi Coperahewa, Chamara Dissanayake, Venerable Bhikkhu Mettavihari, Mr. Harsha Wijaywardhana, Mr. J. Yogaraj, Susil Maduwage and N. Sivakumaran.

Former LLWG Chairperson, Dr. Shahani Weerawarne, and former LLWG members Mahesh Perera and Mr. Anura Tissera (currently abroad) were among those who contributed much towards the success of the Local Language Initiative.

Late Professor and ICTA Chairman V. K. Samaranayake was the pioneer and provided leadership to the arena of local languages in ICT.

He was a visionary on what should happen in the area.

ICTA Board and LLI team member Professor V. Kumar explained the key benefits of the Local Language Initiative.

“Thanks to the LLI, we are now free from many of the past cumbersome procedures like having to send the font to the recipient when emailing a local language document”.

Addressing the audience on “Language trends over the years” Prof. J. B. Disanayaka showed how subjects that look highly academic could be presented in a humorous way.

Narrating the development of the current 61-character Sinhala alphabet the Professor often sent the audience into fits of laughter.