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From books to fonts and local computing
Fifty percent of Nepal's population is still grappling with illiteracy. "Even if we translate everything (on the computer desktop) into Nepali, the people wouldn't understand. They can't read," says Amar Gurung. But that doesn't stop initiatives on the Free and Open Source Software front to localise computing in Nepal.
Amar Gurung is the director of the Nepali Language Computing Project of the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya.The Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya calls itself the "principal archive of books and periodicals in the Nepali language, the mother tongue (or lingua franca) of a little over 30 million people of South Asia".
MPP says the official opening of its PAN Localization Project of Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya took place on March 5, 2004. The main objective look at standardization of Nepali fonts, localization and Open Source.
They're coming out with a live CD in Nepali on December 16, 2005. Gurung says Nepali shares the Devanagari script with north Indian languages, so the script issue isn't a problem. He says techies from the Indlinux network like G Karaunkar have been helpful in promoting localisation solutions in Nepal too.
