The Many Languages of Digital Infrastructures
The ongoing pandemic has compelled much needed reflection on questions of access and infrastructure in India, especially during a time that has rendered the internet and digital technologies as essential, and in many ways the ‘new normal’.Even as we have been coming to terms with how best to cope with a myriad set of new regulations for public and private life now, framed with the promise of a ‘digital India’ in mind, the need to create diverse, inclusive and equitable information societies has become the need of the hour. Linguistic barriers in particular, in reading, writing and speaking in multiple languages on digital interfaces remain persistent today across the world, especially for marginalized and non-dominant communities.
This essay outlines some of the challenges in digitalisation and representation of non-dominant/marginalised languages on the internet today, through reflections on two recent initiatives related to languages and the internet. The first is a forthcoming report on the ‘State of the Internet’s Languages’ (STIL), led by Whose Knowledge? in collaboration with the Oxford Internet Institute and Centre for Internet and Society. The second is a series of collaborative and exploratory short-term research projects on Wikimedia platforms and communities in India, undertaken by team members of the Access to Knowledge programme at CIS. Both projects aim to map and address some of these issues related to the representation and usability of diverse languages on the internet.
Click here to read the full essay published in Seminar Magazine.
