[A12n-forum] Re: "Calling African Scholars" (participation indiscussions on IDN)

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David, Rui,

The article does seem to combine a number of things. I tried to find another
version of this article, in English or French to see if there was something
more to follow up with, but no luck. 

Re IDN in Africa, I was part of a meeting by invitation to set up a project
on this (Prof. Somé was there also. A couple of background documents are on
the Unicode-Afrique list site:
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Unicode-Afrique/files/ . It is not clear
where this project is right now. (I'll ask again.)

>From my point of view, IDN could be used as a sort of wedge issue. IDNs in
extended Latin or non-Latin African alphabets require resolving some other
issues. In fact it seems that the project itself was cast in terms of the
African presence on the internet. And they planned to survey character /
script needs more thoroughly for the IDN issue - as I hear it, though, this
echoes concerns that go back a few years about dynamic composition vs.
precomposed characters. (Censusing African character needs is not a simple
issue for the reason that some orthographies are in flux. It is something
that the PanAfrican Localisation project came up against too: The reason
that there are so many partial listings and databases of African
latin-extended character needs is that the shape of the data.)

How IDNs affect terminology (which is rightly indicated as another area of
concern, and one with importance for localizing software too), is not clear.
And so on.

As to the state of IDNA, I confess not having followed this closely - there
were to have been experiments of a couple of different IDN systems over the
summer, but I have not heard the results.

However the main issue with African language presence on the internet is
content creation. That really needs support, though discussions of that in
workshops such as one in Bamako in 2002 focus on macro approaches, when
probably the most effective approaches would be (1) local or national (few
national ICT plans have mentioned anything about localized content), and (2)
lobbying international development agencies to include more African language
content. (The latter relates to getting ICT4D projects to at least take
their computers the "last mile of i18n" before deploying them.)

It is certainly worth associating Africa with the international push for
IDN, and this project could have done some good. But ultimately what comes
up in the browser window is a bigger content issue than what's goes into the
URL line.

A lot of other good questions I can't answer. In the end it seems like IDN
is used by some as a kind of proxy for larger issue. Keyboard layouts is an
issue 

Re the lethargy issue - a lot can be, and has been written about this. The
level of involvement of African states in the African Union's "Year of
African Languages" 2006 is apparent. See the ACALAN site for a discussion of
inaction on various earlier action plans over the last several decades:
http://www.acalan.org/an/consult.htm

Don


> -----Original Message-----
> From: a12n-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:a12n-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rui Correia
> Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 1:42 AM
> To: 'David Joffe'; A12n-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [A12n-forum] Re: "Calling African Scholars" (participation
> indiscussions on IDN)
> 
> Hi David
> 
> I couldn't make head or tail of the story either, starting with not
> having a clue as to where these "African scholars" got together or what
> the event was. There is no actual by-line, other than saying that
> Highway Africa News Agency is in Grahamstown. Further down it says that
> "some" spoke in São Paulo etc.
> 
> I tried writing to the journalist who wrote the piece (who I know
> personally) but my Outlook failed to prompt an address, so I left t at
> that.
> 
> Rui
> 
> ________________________________________________
> 
> 
> Rui Correia
> Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Consultant
> 2 Cutten St,
> Horison, Roodepoort,
> Johannesburg, South Africa
> Tel/ Fax (+27-11) 766-4336
> Cell (+27) (0) 83-368-1214
> 
> "Quando a verdade é substituída pelo silêncio, o silêncio é uma
> mentira" - Yevgeny Yevtushenko "When truth is replaced by silence, the
> silence is a lie" - Yevgeny Yevtushenko
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: a12n-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:a12n-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Joffe
> Sent: 04 January 2007 15:00
> To: A12n-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [A12n-forum] Re: "Calling African Scholars" (participation
> indiscussions on IDN)
> 
> 
> This seems a bit vague and mixed up to me, muddling several different
> points, and it's not entirely clear to me what the exact issue/problem
> being referred to here is around Internationalized Domain Names - the
> IDN system already supports Unicode and thus basically allows for any
> domain name you want to be registered:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name
> 
> If the problem is that some African languages contain characters that
> are not yet represented in Unicode, then this issue has absolutely
> nothing to do with domain names at all, and in fact simply getting
> those characters into Unicode would be the far more urgent issue. Once
> in, the domain name "problem" would essentially automatically resolve
> itself.
> 
> If the problem is that there aren't keyboards available to allow users
> to easily enter characters in their languages, then this again has
> absolutely nothing to do with domain names at all, and preparing such
> keyboards (virtual or otherwise) would be the issue to solve (e.g. as
> translate.org.za have done for Tshivenda and others).
> 
> If the problem is that some languages don't have formalised
> orthographies yet, then again, this has absolutely nothing to do with
> domain names.
> 
> If the problem being referred to is that there are too few African
> language domain names being registered, that's just because no Africans
> are registering them. Nobody is "leaving Africa behind"; on the
> contrary, here we have technologies that have been fully developed "for
> us" that are there to literally just take and be used
> - Africa is being helped forward.
> 
> The only possible 'domain name issue' I can think of here that they
> might be referring to is African registrars not yet supporting IDNA for
> country-specific top-level country codes (e.g. could I register a ".za"
> at http://co.za/ with Tshivenda characters in it and if not why not
> (*)), cf.:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name#DNS_regis
> tries_known_to_have_adopted_IDNA
> 
> If that's the problem, why don't they just say that. No "agenda"
> needs to be "moved forward", no "discussions" need to be made at
> "follow-up meetings", no additional trips to Sao Paulo are required
> (because all the required software is available on the Internet), and
> there is no "Internationalized Domain Name debate". IDNs also won't
> "solve communication problems"; they only apply to the name/address of
> the website that appears in the address bar of your browser (e.g.
> tshwanedje.com), and nowhere else. In fact for .com, .net, .org etc.,
> as I understand it, it is already possible to register any African
> language domain name that can be written with Unicode. If the country-
> specific registrars are for some reason not implementing IDNA, I wonder
> if the demand is simply very low. When someone presents a technical-
> sounding issue in a cloudy/muddled way as a premise for seeking, quote,
> "a lot of financial commitment" to solve the "problem", I must admit I
> get a bit suspicious.
> 
> 
> > "In 2004, Adama Samassekou, head of the African Academy of Languages
> > was quoted saying that there was lethargy within African leadership
> to
> > use local languages even at African Unity meetings."
> 
> Well, if the problem is lethargy, I'm not sure any amount of technology
> will solve that.
> 
>  - David
> 
> (*) According to http://co.za/intro/choose.shtml, no, I could not.
> This is, as I understand it, only because the http://co.za/ admins
> haven't implemented IDNA.
> 
> 
> 
> On 31 Dec 2006 at 13:46, Don Osborn wrote:
> 
> From:                 "Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To:                   <A12n-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
>       <A12n-collaboration@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date sent:            Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:46:16 -0500
> Copies to:            Subject:                [A12n-forum] "Calling
> African
> Scholars" (participation in discussions
>       on IDN)
> 
> > The following item from the Highway Africa News Agency (South Africa)
> was
> > seen on AllAfrica.com at
> http://allafrica.com/stories/200612080675.html .
> I
> > believe that the IDN project mentioned is the same as the one
> launched in
> > Dakar in Sept. 2005 (in which Prof. Somé and ACALAN president
> Samassekou
> > participated)...   DZO
> >
> >
> > Africa: Calling African Scholars
> > Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)
> > http://hana.ru.ac.za/
> > December 8, 2006
> > Posted to the web December 8, 2006
> >
> > Rebecca Wanjiku
> > Geneva
> >
> > African scholars interested in developing and preserving indigenous
> > languages have been challenged to take the lead in the
> Internationalised
> > Domain Name (IDN) debate. Prof. Maxime Z. Somé, from the University
> of
> > Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso called on African linguists to actively
> > participate in the IDN project.
> >
> > 'Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an
> exceptional
> > authority in African affairs and move the project forward, said Somé.
> >
> > Somé is concerned that Cambodia, Japan, China, Korea and Arabic
> countries
> > seem to be moving at a faster pace and leaving Africa behind.
> >
> > In his opinion, linguistic experts as well as scientists in Africa
> should
> > work together and move the agenda forward. He added that the IDN
> project
> > requires linguists to agree on the language and terminologies of a
> > particular language and the scientists to work on the technological
> aspects.
> >
> > After the agreement of the scripts and language tables, the UNICODE
> > consortium, which consists of computer makers and other bodies, will
> be
> > expected to integrate the languages into most computers sold to the
> Africa
> > region.
> >
> > In this regard, if I have a computer, I can choose the language to
> use,
> just
> > like I select to use French or German. In the case of French, the
> computer
> > inserts the right accents and other letters that may not be available
> on
> the
> > English key board.
> >
> > Asked whether this will lead to development of many key boards, Some?
> says
> > experts can work on some regional languages like Bambara, used in
> Guinea,
> > Mali, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso or Fulani, used in Nigeria,
> Senegal,
> > Mauritania and Mali.
> >
> > 'We know that this project requires a lot of financial commitment and
> big
> > businesses are not going to invest if not assured of profits. That
> leaves
> > governments, which have been very non committal, ' he adds.
> >
> > But he maintains that scholars can jumpstart the process by learning
> from
> > other countries where experts volunteered their services for the sake
> of
> > development.
> >
> > Some spoke at the ongoing Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
> > Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Sao Paulo, where the urgency of IDNs has
> taken
> > centre stage and its proponents are touting it as a solution to
> > communication problems. While there are workshops and follow-up
> meetings
> to
> > discuss and update on issues relating to IDNs, Africa is stuck with
> the
> > obsession of listing its numerous cultural and logistical problems as
> the
> > hindrance to IDN progress.
> >
> > In 2004, Adama Samassekou, head of the African Academy of Languages
> was
> > quoted saying that there was lethargy within African leadership to
> use
> local
> > languages even at African Unity meetings.
> >
> > Swahili was recommended in 1986 but was used at the AU meeting in
> July
> 2004
> > and is spoken in 15 East and Central African countries.
> >
> > Copyright © 2006 Highway Africa News Agency
> > +27 46 636 1590
> > highwayafrica@xxxxxxx
> >
> >
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> ---
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> TshwaneDJe Human Language Technology
> 
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