---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:17:37 +0530 (IST)
From: FN
These guys, young friends from West Bengal, are trying to get the
tribal Santhali language working with Free Software.
Below is a self-explanatory entry from http://blogs.randomink.org/ It
is from "Weekend Aantel". Sayamindu from Kolkata was mentioning the
Santhali project recently.
[Wikipedia has this to say about Santhali, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhali: Santali is a language in the
Munda subfamily of Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari. It is
spoken by about six million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and
Bhutan. Most of its speakers live in India, in the states of
Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal. It has its
own alphabet, known as Ol Cemet', but literacy is very low, between 10
and 30%. Santali is spoken by the Santhals.]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Adieu Mandal Hembrom!
Weekend Aantel 21/02/2005 - 17:23 Mandal Hembrom passed away at TMC,
Mumbai, today in the early morning. He was under-going treatment at
TMC. I don't yet have the details of the exact cause of death, but so
far it is known that his condition detoriarated after he underwent
Chemotheraphy and lapsed into a severe cardiac arrest.
Mandal-da was the lead linguist (as also being a native speaker) in
our Santhali CASTLE Project. His death is not just a great loss to our
project, but a loss to all the Santhals struggling to establish their
identity in a globalised world that dictates a lop-sided homogeneity
at the cost of losing unique cultural traits, language and social
structures.
Mandal-da's illness was detected at an advanced stage. He wanted to
use the time he had to complete the work on the translation of the
strings. Unfortunately, he was taken away from us before that could
happen! Perhaps, its a strange co-incidence that today happens to be
the International Mother Language Day (21st Feb) that Mandal-da
breathed his last.
We need to reaffirm our commitment to the work on bridging the ICT
divide. As I wrote in my "A walk across the Digital Divide"
experience, its not as un-bridgable as it often sounds. Its only by
ensuring the continuance of the Santhali L10N project that we can
truly pay our respect to the dreams and efforts of Mandal Hembrom.
END OF QUOTE
On behalf of All, let me dip our flag to all these guys trying to make
computing work for for forgotten people and the poor... whose
languages otherwise barely make for a 'viable market'. FN
Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your
vocation. --Aristotle
--
Bharathi S
