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Mahesh

07/01/24 06:53 AM IST

Digital tools set to save Kashmiri script from disuse

In News
  • Two technological giants, Microsoft and Google, will infuse a new lease of life into the language, whose rich literature continues to remain accessible to only a small section of people.
Microsoft translator
  • Microsoft India’s MS Translator software has now included the Kashmiri language.
  • In November 2023, an online campaign was get Kashmiri included in Google Translate as well; this demand has also been accepted and is likely to be rolled out in the next six months.
  • These moves are likely to benefit 70 lakh Kashmiri speakers living in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir, including those in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Adbee Markaz Kamraz (AMK)
  • The AMK, an umbrella platform of 30 cultural organisations in the valley, is at the forefront of efforts to promote Kashmiri.
  • The Microsoft and Google initiatives will preserve and popularise the language.
  • It will help in a two-way process: one, in translating Kashmiri literature into English, reaching to a wider audience, and two, in translating English literature into Kashmiri.
  • It was the AMK campaign that pushed around 17,000 people to write to Google in November and December last year, urging the company to include Kashmiri in its translation app.
  • This campaign has given an additional lease of life to the Kashmiri language.
Other Measures
  • Left out of school curricula for almost half a century, Kashmiri — which is influenced significantly by Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic — had fallen into the category of endangered languages.
  • In a 2013 research paper, scholar and author Maroof Shah said that 95% of literate Kashmiris could not write Kashmiri. Less than 5% could read it fluently.
  • Urdu was introduced as an official language during the Dogra monarchy in Kashmir prior to Independence. Kashmiri was introduced as a subject up to the primary level after 1947, only to be withdrawn in 1955 for unknown reasons.
  • An earlier AMK campaign, however, resulted in the re-inclusion of Kashmiri as a subject in schools up to Class 8 by 2001. Later, Kashmiri was introduced as an optional subject at the undergraduate level in 2008.
  • Such efforts on the education front began the language’s revival as a written medium, ensuring that the next generation can read their mother tongue.
  • The seeds to allow the language to survive were sown by 2000.
  • In 2020, the Union government passed the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Bill, including Kashmiri in the list of official languages of the Union Territory (UT).
  • The new age platforms like YouTube and now Google and Microsoft are going to create rare knowledge banks about the language.
  • The new generation is dependent on gadgets and will find it easy to know the meaning of the words they get to hear from elders.
  • It will introduce them to their cultural roots.
Source- The Hindu

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