'Information concerning the writer was not available on the internet!' 🙉

The State of the Tamil Language 

[in Government Websites] 

Well, this is an editorial feature from today’s Tamil Thisai, The Hindu Group’s Tamil Newspaper.

The article discusses in detail, the condition of the Tamil language on Government websites today.

I’ve attempted a translation of just a few salient points from this article, for our consideration.

So here goes the article, ‘in English’ -

Quite recently, a recommendation came from Wikipedia, asking to remove a stub (an article) on a prominent, Govt award-winning writer from Tamil Nadu, reasoning that, the stub was in no way connected with the writer!

The Reason: Information concerning the writer was not available on the internet!

Particularly, when one googles the web for information pertaining to this writer, no article of any merit whatsoever is available on any of the authentic, secure and reputed websites.

When one looks at this issue from a technological perspective, all government news bulletins that have been released so far, have not been in Unicode format.

That’s one reason why, when you google up the web for information concerning Tamil Nadu government’s news releases, we are not able to obtain any of the government news bulletins.

Well, this is NOT a problem pertaining to one person alone! Rather, it is a problem that pertains to the functional usage of the Tamil language on the Web!

In general, important government websites are maintained by the National Informatics Centre.

The rest of the websites are maintained by the particular department or centre that comes under its jurisdiction.

And among these, more than 60% of Tamil Nadu government websites do not have a Tamil interface between them. Which means, the website will only be in English.  

Therefore, a person who knows only Tamil, will not be able to make full functional use of the website!

Tamil Unicode

Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government used to release its news bulletins in English. Later on, by means of a type-writing keyboard, the news was typed out in Tamil, and uploaded as a scanned copy!

Then, from 2007 onwards, they started releasing the news bulletins in the Tamil fonts named ‘Dame’ and ‘Vanavil’ fonts.

During the years 2013 and 2017, government orders concerning the Unicode, came in.

However, and ironically at that, the particular G.O that asked for using Unicode in all government websites, in itself was not in Unicode. That apart, although fourteen years have passed us by, there has been no change to the Unicode format.

When all news bulletins from the Govt of India are released in Unicode, it is all the more imperative that, news bulletins pertaining to the Govt of Tamil Nadu are also released in Unicode format, and that too, as early as possible!

If possible, all news bulletins that have been released thus far, should also be changed and released again in Unicode format.

This will help everyone, including visually challenged readers to easily search for, and read them quite effortlessly.

Even if they’re in PDF file format, they could always be converted without any pilferage or loss whatsoever, if they’re released in ISO 19005-1 version.

The ‘State’ of the Universities in Tamil Nadu

Many of the Universities in the State (with the exception of Tamil University & Tamil Nadu Open University) including University of Madras, Madurai Kamaraj University, Thiruvalluvar University do not have a Tamil interface as yet!

And as for Universities like the Agricultural University and the Maritime University, though they have a few news bulletins in Tamil, still the interface is only in English…

observes the writer of this insightful article, Mr. Neechalkaaran! 💛

The writer can be contacted at neechalkaran@gmail.com