Regarding Urdu Translations

kadnan · Post by **kadnan** » Wed Jul 30, 2003 1:11 am

tonight i got chance to visit a pgadmin link on postgresql website and the reason to visit the link was Tariq saab..i saw his name mahin with his supernet email id=)

actually that was a private message sent by list member to Tariq Saab ..it was all about uru translations..

here is a request

-please please dont use difficult (saqeel) urdu words..average pakistani doesn`t understand typical urdu word for example one could use the term

MOHANDIS for ENGINEER...so instead of MOHANDIS.. "ENGINEER" will be the best option so keep in mind that urdu translation should be free of diffiicult arabic,persian and sanskirit words

OT:we need our own Nastaliq Fonts...i personally like nastaliq one.maybe coz i love Jang News Paper?=)

Thanks

mahin · Post by **mahin** » Wed Jul 30, 2003 5:27 pm

This is premature as we are still waiting/searching for some GPL text editor / Fonts which we can use for saving our translations from hard into soft format.

Average Pakistani is illitrate

so nothing is easy or difficult for them to learn. General rule is if Muqtadara / Urdu Board have adopted any English / French / Portugese word as Urdu then they stay. With few exception we would prefer to use Arabic and then Farsi terms.

Point is majority have to learn terminology so it does not matter what they learn has its origin in English or Arabic.

In any case our work is all saved manually, once Urdu Editor issue is resolved then will make these available on-line for comments.

kadnan · Post by **kadnan** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:15 am

i dont think you would fine any GPL`d urdu editor? yes you would lots of commercial one supporting nastaliq font

keep in mind..most of linux/unix products are based on "Reverse Engineering" ..linux hackers didn have source of most windows software but they used it and made a clone of it:)..they didnt rely on any GPL version of current linux based softwares:) for example xMMS or KPPP

kadnan · Post by **kadnan** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:29 am

Why would you force someone to learn difficult urdu word?its upto progrmer or software engineer how he utilizes the arabic/urdu font

as you said yourself avg pakistani is illetrate then think how would he able to pronounce a word like "mohandis" ...i didnt go for urdu option for 9/10th exams just coz of very difficult(saqeel) urdu words ..how many students go for urdu medium education in karachi? i think just govt schools,not coz they love urdu ..just coz they are forced to use typical urdu...i am not anti Urdu at all..i love urdu language a lot but its a fact that i dislike to use difficult word in writings,,i still cant remember the urdu terminology of "Open source" ..very difficult to remember

aah muqtadira..most of Muqtadira ppl are poets and urdu writers and such ppl like to use difficult urdu words(to show off) but we are not muqtadira members..i wouldnt say "mujhe Sharab-e-Adam do" ..my paki ppl will consider me pagal..why do I use the term Sharab-e-Adam while i can say a sime word "Pani" or water in english
so i would request you that dont follow muqtadira if you wnt to promote linux in local community..otherwise ppl wont appreciate your work..make the things simple like "Open Source" philosphy:>..there are many ppl like me who didnt like to prefer Urdu medium in School coz of difficult urdu words..our urdu scholors or writers were lazy..they didnt bother to find alternate urdu words for such typical arabic/farsi terms. and they blame tht pakistanis dont love urdu.. duh..

Post by **fawad** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 7:17 pm

kadnan,
I agree with you regarding the 'difficult' urdu part. God knows my urdu is really pathetic. However, I love the fact the Mr. Tariq puts some effort into educating people about urdu. When we read some line of text in English that contains a word we don't understand, we pick up a dictionary or ask someone the meaning of that word. Why shouldn't we put the same effort into learning an urdu word?

P.S. Try u-trans for easy urdu editing. It lets you type urdu in english and converts it into a utf-8 web page. The downloadable binary is for Windows, but the source code is fortran and compiles effortlessly in GCC f99.

-fawad

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 4:31 pm

Well nice discussion, but the point is that, by now
both GNOME and KDE apps are unicode aware.
And Urdu support is getting even better as we speak.
The only problem should be a __COMPLETE__ URDU font.

Uptill now, no such font exists, not even on M$ Windows.

It has to be sorted out as soon as Unicode people finalize their draft. And someone has to come up with a complete font.

mahin · Post by **mahin** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 5:22 pm

You are right now we have little excuse for not translating KDE into Urdu.

Fonts are still an issue but not that serious any more.

Any progress in re-mastering that Distro for translation work ? BTW there has been some improvement in Nafees Naskh, have you checked that ?

http://www.crulp.org

farhanksa · Post by **farhanksa** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 12:21 am

aoa

good discussion...guys will u pls tell me who is currently working on urdu fonts..or urdu support ..for gnome and kde....
imintrested in it ....wts going on that

mahin · Post by **mahin** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 11:36 am

In Pakistan only work [ to the best of my knowledge ]on Urdu Fonts is being done by Dr Sarmad and then Lateef Sheikh of Zaban.com. Among them Lateef's work is under GPL so any one interested can work on it. There is also KHOTOT project at Arabeyes
http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Khotot

Anjum agreed to work on producing a Live Distro [ some thing like Demo Linux / Knoppix ] which can be booted from CD Rom without need for installation. This distro will provide translation tools and resources by default so that those doing translation have to worry about nothing except translation.

If any one can spare some time and help Anjum with testing/developing feel free to contact him or me through PM.

Once we have this distro then we would need volunteers to undertake actual translation work. Our first priorty is KDE then Gnome beyond that what ever one feels like.

Post by **mrkkhattak** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 12:45 pm

Assalamualaikum,

As fawad said that one could use utrans for easy urdu editing. Yep it is good but what we need is a little bit more ...

We need to have something, in which could write urdu b/w html/xhtml tags <p align="center"> any urdu pharase</p> & then save as .html/.xhtml. As we would like to translate howtos/web etc into urdu. Look at http://hi.openoffice.org/index.html it simply works with Hindi ... so why can't we have anything like this for urdu (to display simple urdu fonts in the browser)?

Regards.

-Meraj

Post by **fawad** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 10:06 pm

Problem is that the urdu fonts aren't ready. Check out BBC Urdu. They are using arabic unicode range for writing urdu. The CRULP people are indeed making good progress with the urdu fonts.

farhantoqeer · Post by **farhantoqeer** » Fri Oct 10, 2003 8:44 am

I have used a free urdu true type font back in 1999 with my urdu dictonary project. check this out, the font is working fine, but it is a true type font and i am not sure about its utility in linux.
http://www.urdustan.net/naseem/urdu/font/ here is its authour's link http://www.geocities.com/naseem_amjad/

I just tried that font in OpenOffice and it is working.