NEWS
HYDERABAD
22
IPL-4 gets off to a thunderous start in Chennai
Bollywood stars, led by Badshah Shahrukh Khan, wow crowd at opening ceremony of cricket extravaganza
Attempts on to revive Odia Wikipedia
Renuka Phadnis
MANGALORE: Some people who
edit the Odia Wikipedia say
that getting a Wikipedia in
the language is an important
tool to keep the language
alive. At present, an attempt
is on to revive Odia Wikipedia
(or.wikipedia.org), one of the
earliest Indian language Wi-
kipedias to be created.
Interestingly, the guidance
to stoke the Odia Wikipedia is
led by Bangalorean Shiju
Alex, who edits the Malaya-
lam Wikipedia, while another
Bangalorean, Subhashish Pa-
nigrahi, translates and cre-
ates templates for the
language.
While Mr. Panigrahi has
spoken about the Odia Wiki-
pedia to 6,000 students
across six schools in Bhuba-
neswar, Mr. Alex, who is pas-
sionate about growing Indian
language Wikipedia and
writes for the Malayalam Wi-
kipedia, noticed the low con-
tent in Odia Wikipedia. He
scouted for Odia editors in
Bangalore and finding no re-
sponse initially, he took the
initiative to Orissa. On April
3, he helped organise the sec-
ond Odia Wikipedia Academy
in Bhubaneswar, to bring an
awareness of the Odia Wiki-
pedia among people.
The Odia Wikipedia was
one of the first few Indian lan-
guage Wikipedias to be cre-
ated. Although started in
The Hindu, 9th April 2011, Page 22, Hyderabad
Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in Bhubaneswar on Sunday, April 3.
2002, along with Wikipedias
in Assamese, Punjabi, Nepali,
Oriya and Malayalam, prior
even to the Hindi Wikipedia
in 2003 July, the Odia Wiki-
pedia never grew. It has, to
date, only 700 articles.
“We have to save Odiya. We
have to take the movement
online and Odiya Wikipedia is
a vital part of it,” says Sam-
bidhan Mohanty, a Cuttack-
based businessman from a
family of Odiya writers who
studied in Bangalore.
Mr. Mohanty says he ap-
preciates Shiju and Subhash-
ish as they got Odia speakers
involved in Odia. “We came
together because of them,” he
says.
Mr. Mohanty says the main
aim is to get people attracted
to Odia Wikipedia, to get
more people to speak the lan-
guage and write in it. Next is
to get the State Government’s
attention so that Odiya Wiki-
pedia can be made part of
school curricula.
A big challenge he sees is
the number of Odia dialects.
Although the language has a
script, it has six dialects, in-
cluding Sambalpuri (or Kosa-
li), Kalahandia and
Berhampuri. So even within a
small group of editors, there
is a difference of opinion of
how a word should be written
(for example, “dharm” or
“dharma”).
Mr. Alex says the reasons
for the low interest in Odia
Wikipedia might be many in-
cluding the number of people
who speak the language, the
number of people with access
to a computer, availability of
required fonts and browsers.
A major challenge was the
inability, till now, to type in
Odiya within Wikipedia, and
the large dependence upon an
external tool to add content.
However, now a typing solu-
tion has been developed for
Odia so that problem has
been resolved to some extent.
Mr. Alex says lack of a typ-
ing solution within Wikipedia
was a problem that assailed
content creation across all In-
dian languages (using a non
Latin script) on Wikipedia. A
big help has been the typing
solution for Malayalam with-
in Wikipedia, which was de-
veloped in 2007. The solution
has a base, which can be ex-
tended to other Indian lan-
guages and was used for
creating typing solutions in
Tamil, Kannada, Marathi,
Hindi and Bengali WIkipe-
dias through 2010. Other lan-
guages are going on.
Srikant Kedia has intro-
duced the Wikipedia to at
least 35 people.
“Now, we need support
from the Odia community to
test the language. Now that it
has a mature community, I
can move on,” says Mr. Alex,
who has given demos of edits
in Odia Wikipedia in Banga-
lore and Bhubaneswar.
Solar ring observed
Ananya Dutta
KOLKATA: A chance gaze to the
skies in Kolkata on Friday
morning would have revealed
a bright ring around the sun,
an atmospheric phenomenon
called a 22 degree halo of the
sun, which lasted nearly an
hour.
“There is no way that the
phenomenon can be predict-
Hi-tech, green
shelters for
troops at high
altitudes
Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI: The Army has initi-
ated a move to provide sol-
diers working in high-altitude
areas improved insulated
shelters based on green tech-
nology and design, incorpo-
rating measures for energy
conservation.
The pilot project to im-
prove habitat follows Defence
Minister A.K. Antony’s visit
to the forward areas. It “in-
volves construction of habitat
at various posts of the bor-
ders, on an incremental mod-
ule concept, which aims at
providing insulated shelter,
integrated with different
kinds of technologies.” the
Army said.
THE HINDU SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2011
Ajai Sreevatsan
CHENNAI: As the fireworks dis-
play peppered the night sky
with brilliant hues here on
Friday, a patch of green once
again captured the nation’s
attention and imagination.
Though the World Cup got
over just a few days ago, a
packed M.A. Chidambaram
stadium lapped up ałl that
the fourth edition of the In-
dian Premier League (IPL-4)
had to offer as the mega
sporting event got off to a
thunderous start.
At the opening ceremony,
Bollywood was out in full
strength, led by its Badshah,
Shahrukh Khan.
The master entertainer
sent the crowd into raptures
when he launched into peppy
Tamil numbers along with
actor Shriya Saran.
Shankar Narayanan, who
has been to every IPL match
that took place in Chennai,
screamed, “I never expected
Shahrukh to perform to Ta-
ed as it entirely depends on
atmospheric conditions. So
anyone who looked up at the
sky when the ring was formed
and saw it, was just lucky to
have done so,” said Dr. D.P.
Duari, Director (Academic
and Research) of the Birla
Planetarium.
Caused by the presence of a
particular kind of clouds in
the atmosphere, the phenom-
mil numbers. Kalakkitta
maamu [You rocked dude]!”
Outside the stadium,
cricket fanatics such as S.
Srinivas (13) were waiting to
get their faces painted. Being
a Kolkata Knight Riders sup-
porter, he kept saying to all
the paraphernalia sellers,
“I’m not CSK!”
Explaining the reason, he
said: “I like Gambhir. So I
shifted loyalties.”
His mom Vanitha, a die-
hard CSK supporter, cannot
forgive Srinivas. “He’s a trai-
tor,” she said.
Despite the infectious en-
thusiasm, there were quite a
few offering tickets for half
the price showing that
‘World Cup hangover’ seems
to be true for at least a sec-
tion of the fans.
E. Jaishree (11), from Vil-
lupuram, a beneficiary of the
Save A Child’s Heart Foun-
dation project of Apollo
Hospitals, walked with the
two team captains on the
pitch.
enon is spectacular, but not
particularly rare.
“The phenomenon occurs
whenever a particular kind of
cloud is present in the atmo-
sphere. These clouds — char-
acterised by thin strands —
are called cirrus clouds,” Dr.
Duari said. The cirrus clouds
are formed at a height of be-
tween five and 10 km above
the earth’s surface.
...HY-HY