IT department to release software tools for 6 more Indian languages

The department of information technology (DIT) will release a set of software tools and fonts for six Indian languages - Bangla, Konkani, Kashmiri, Manipuri, Santhali and Sindhi - on Tuesday.

The software tools and fonds were developed by the Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC), which is an autonomous society under DIT.

With the release of IT software tools and fonts for the six languages, the technology development programme for all the 22 constituently recognised Indian languages will be complete, a government release said today.

The release of these Indian languages CDs will be a major milestone for the ministry of communications and IT in its endeavour to bridge the digital divide in the country, the release noted.

Earlier, the department had released software tools and fonts for Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Assamese, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Bodo, Dogri, Maithali and Nepali as a part of the initiative.

The initiative is aimed at overcoming the language barrier in technology adoption. It will provide Indians a platform for preserving their existing culture while creating new content. "Today Information Technology has become a yardstick for gauging a nation's development and role of language technology has become prominent," the release noted.