EDITORIAL: Full marks to the planning ministry for approving the National Language Processing Laboratory (NLP Lab) to implement and promote Urdu. It has also been reported that the ministry of national heritage and culture division is the sponsoring agency while the National Language Promotion Department (NLPD) will execute the project.
The core objective is to elevate Urdu to the status of languages with extensive digital data resources and equip it with modern technology applications, which include machine translation (MT), speech recognition (SR), and optical character recognition (OCR).
The aim is to make language learning more accessible, facilitate cross-border communication as well as commerce, enable access to online content, promote cross-cultural understanding, and help preserve language resources.
All this goes to show that Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal has been a busy man on the job even as the political elite has been completely consumed by the ugly battle for power that has been all the rage for more than a year now. It turns out that he has been the driving force behind the PDM (Pakistan Democratic Movement) government’s push for a digital transformation in the country. Just last month, he also established a steering committee of experts from IT (information technology) and private sectors to facilitate the transformation in a way that increases the country’s export volume.
The initiative to breathe fresh life into Urdu, which has become a part of the same project, follows the Supreme Court’s 2015 order to implement it as the official language in all government departments under Article 251 of the constitution.
And components being put in place are expected to radically empower the language both as a storehouse of knowledge and medium of communication. The machine translation (MT) module, for example, uses computer algorithms to automatically translate text from English to Urdu. This will enable quick translations of all current official documents into Urdu.
The speech recognition (SR) module, on the other hand, will enable digital devices to recognise and transcribe human speech into Urdu text. And the optical character recognition (OCR) module will convert printed text into editable digital text.
There is a general consensus across the world that only languages that successfully adapt to the latest technologies will survive, much less thrive, in the 21st century. As such the planning ministry seems to be doing an admirable job of making sure that our national language stays relevant.
But there’s another, cultural element to this exercise too. Nations take great pride in their national languages, which is why most proud leaders prefer to speak their own national languages at international forums, despite their proficiency in English. Most Pakistani leaders, however, seem only too happy to communicate and lecture in English when they make appearances at important events.
Some observers attribute such tendencies to the colonial hangover that we’re often told we continue to suffer from. Yet most Indian leaders, who won independence at the same time as us, increasingly prefer chaste Hindi for their speeches and meetings, especially since the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) first came to power under the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee a couple of decades ago.
Our Turkish friends underwent a similar transformation under some of their more nationalist leaders, especially Erdogan, whose long reign has seen a rejuvenation of traditional Turkish culture that goes far beyond their language.
There are important lessons in these examples for us as well. And the planning ministry’s efforts to digitise Urdu will no doubt go a long way in reviving its use at all levels, from the grass-root all the way to the highest offices in government.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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