Bangla computing: a missed window of opportunity?

Popular software makers have incorporated more than 250 languages into their operating system, but Bangla is not among them, despite the sharp rise of every day computer usage in the country and elsewhere in the world.

Operating systems handle a computer's hardware interface and its scheduled tasks, while also allocating storage and providing a platform for software applications.

ICT experts say Bangla has lost its chance to have an entry as a computer operating system language due to a lack of initiative and patronisation from the government as well as negligence in implementing the country's copyright law.

"At present, there is no Bangla software available that follows the rules of the Bangla dictionary or grammar," said Mostofa Jabbar, a pioneer in developing a Bangla interface.

"We will not be able to proceed further with Bangla language, for instance using it in various software, until we can establish Bangla in operating systems," said Jabbar.

The use of Bangla, meanwhile, is increasing everyday, with over 30 crore people using the language, mostly in Bangladesh and West Bengal. A large section of expatriates also publish Bangla newspapers abroad.

Many tribal communities, including among others the Ahomia, Monipuri, Naga, chakma, also use Bangla letters to write their ethnic languages.

Bangladesh has yet to be incorporated into the universal computer code since the country is not a member of the Unicode Consortium, a body responsible for creating a global character standard. The Unicode Consortium has successfully created an International Standard called ISO/IEC 10646 for numerous languages.

A move was made by the government back in 1987 to incorporate Bangla into the universal computer code, but no progress was made since then, sources said.

"As a solution to the problem Bangladesh can obtain membership in the Unicode Consortium, as the country is already a member of ISO. So we can proceed," Jabbar said.

The Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institute (BSTI), a part of the Ministry of Industries, is by default the liaison body for the ISO, but they do not have the expertise to explain the problem to the Unicode. "Even, they (BSTI) are reluctant to seek help from the expert organisations in private sector," he added.

The consortium has developed a unified language code for all the languages in the world, since computers store letters and other characters by assigning them a number. Before Unicode was invented, there were hundreds of different encoding systems for assigning such numbers. Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the program or the language.

Global computer giants like Apple, Xerox, HP and IBM ignored inclusion of the Bangla language in their operating systems due to the absence of implementation of copyright in the country, said Akhtar Hussain, an ICT expert working for a multinational company.

Hussain said the companies lost their interest in Bangladesh despite having a huge potential market, as we are yet to be habituated to buy software rather using pirated one.

"If we can implement the copyright law then big companies will come forward to adopt Bangla in their operating system," Jabbar said.

However, after including most of the world's languages in their operating system, software giant Microsoft finally plans to release by April the localised version of its Windows operating system and its Office suite in four more Indian languages, including Tamil and Bengali. But it is unclear if the Bangladesh ICT expert community and concerned officials are aware of this fact.

Hussain said implementation of Unicode is a problem for Bangla language as the letters presently used are not Unicoded. So we need to make a combination of Bangla letters and glyphs and also a list of glyphs and its standardisation to bring uniformity and to ensure acceptance to all.

He hopes that at the end of the tunnel we can just resolve three problems with Bangla script, including "|" (dari- the stop mark in Bangla script), "||", double dari and the letter Ba without the matra.

While Ekshey February has earned recognition as the International Mother Language Day, the authorities concerned are nonetheless doing little for the advancement of the language.