Training on "Fundamentals of Local Language Computing", of the PAN Localization project aimed to build basic technical capacity for local language computing in people who are presently involved or will get involved (through this project) in localization research. The training also aimed to educate the attendees on the current state of practice in localization on Microsoft and Linux

platforms, to enable them to make educated decisions on choice of platform for local language computing development in their respective countries. It was believed that this training would trigger research and development activity in this area.

Before the commencement of the training, there was a two day long PAN Project Meeting session that was especially conducted to introduce the PAN Project Country teams to one another, through the respective project leaders. Roles and expectation of all the country components, the regional secretariat and IDRC were discussed by the respective leaders. An intensive exercise on the formation of baseline surveys for technology, HR and policy were also conducted during the last day of the Project Meeting.

In the training on local language computing, there were ten localization experts who were called as trainers. They included Mr. Ali Basit and Mr. Anas Abbar from Microsoft USA, Mr. Takayuki. K. Sato from CICC Japan, Mr. Christopher Fynn from United Kingdom, Mr. Theppitak Karoonbunyanan of Thai Linux from Thailand (referred through NECTEC), Mr. Roozbeh Pournader from Sharif University, Iran, Dr. Sarmad Hussain, Mr. Shafique-ur-Rehman, Mr. Aamir Wali and Ms. Tahira Naseem from National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Pakistan. In addition there were twenty two trainees participating from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China (Tibet), Iran, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

Apart from the technical success this training facilitated the development of a support network for Asian localization, since this training included participation of localization researchers from fifteen different countries, it provided a regional platform for the participants to share their localization knowledge, discuss problems and find solutions to their issues from within this platform.

In addition, the presentations conducted in this training will serve as a complete training resource which can be used to conduct similar training in future, while the surveys conducted during this training served to gather baseline data relevant to localization in participating Asian countries.

In summary, this training of the PAN Localization project has been extremely beneficial to the participants technically and to the PAN Localization project in an attempt to promote localization in the Asian countries.

PAN Localization project primarily aims to develop a sustainable human resource capacity in the Asian region for R&D in local language technology, raise current levels of technological support for Asian languages and advance policy for local language content creation and access across Asia for development. 

The training on the “Fundamentals of Local language computing”, for the PAN Localization project was the first step in the realization of the project’s over all objectives. 

Following were the primary objectives of the training:

1.      To build a support network of various researchers and experts related to localization so that it could help south-south partnerships

2.      To build basic technical capacity in the Asian ICT researchers, practitioners and developers in developing application in local languages

3.      To collect useful information regarding the status of localization on Linux and the Microsoft Platform

Researchers from many Asian countries are presently working on developing local language enabled ICTs.  However, inability to discuss localization issues and gain expert advice on these issues retards their effort.  This problem can be efficiently minimized through co-operation of researchers at regional level.  Thus through this training the development of a peer support network for Asian localization ( with experts from around the globe, who can help each other address localization development and standardization problems faced by others) was aimed to be realized.  As it is known that there is a great deal of expertise already available in this regard, but connectivity remains a significant hurdle in exploiting this knowledge.  Since this training included participation of localization researchers from fifteen different countries, it provided a regional platform for the participants to share their localization knowledge, discuss problems and find solutions to their issues from within this platform. Participants of this training were believed to help each other during and even beyond this training on localization issues and thus contribute effectively to nurture this support network as much as possible. It was believed that once this network is established, further efforts will be made to bring more of the relevant researchers to this network.

Another key objective of this training was to train its participants technically on basic local language computing.  For this purpose the training included presentations on the following basic topics of localization. They were: 

• Unicode Standard (Architecture, Normalization and Collation)
• Open Type Font Development for Asian Scripts (+hands on workshop)
• Localization on MS Platform      
• Localization on Linux Platform
• NLP solutions (e.g. Lexical development, spell checker etc.)
• Software Engineering principles

It was further believed that this training would control some risks associated with the effective implementation of the PAN Localization project. The foremost risk to this project's completion is the in-availability of trained personnel in the areas of localization, for most of the partner countries of PAN Localization project.  To counter for such a situation, this training is of tremendous benefit to those countries that have weak background in localization technologies and through this training they could possibly get help from the participating localization experts to resolve their issue. 

It was further believed that through the same training the attendees would be educated on the current state of practice in localization on Microsoft and Linux platforms, so as to enable them to make educated decisions on the right choice of platform for local language computing development in their respective countries. 

Keeping the above mentioned objectives on front, PAN Localization Project planned to conduct an Asia level training on the “Fundamentals of Local Language Computing” from the 19^th -23^rd January, 2004.