Sunday, April 22, 2012

Only right people can develop Urdu language: Dr Durrani

By Manzoor Qadir

ISLAMABAD: The government should select right people with vision to prepare a group of linguistic experts the way experts are groomed in other fields, if it is genuinely interested in the development of Urdu language, said Dr Attash Durrani, the founder and head of Urdu Informatics Project at the National Language Authority (NLA).

Talking to Daily Times, he said, “We have been preparing experts for business, commerce, industry, science and technology, but not for our national language. This task could not be completed with the literary figures heading the departments and authorities mandated to language development, now the government should take on board the language experts.”

He opined that only literary meetings and seminars would not serve the larger cause of Urdu language development, but the country needs to work hard on scientific bases. “Only this way we can see our national language standing tall with other international languages,” he said.

Durrani, who will retire from service on April 23, is the author of several books and dozens of research papers. He has devoted his life for research and to make Urdu a forceful language serving the students and researchers in all spheres of knowledge and information.

“If we are genuinely interested in the Urdu language development we need to have a national language policy based on the scientific language survey instead of meaningless deskwork,” he mentioned.

“We have restricted Urdu language since ages to only literature that is not more than five percent of the entire language, and have ignored 95 percent of the language body,” said Dr Durrani, who has been the flag-bearer of Urdu language planning, development and management for over four decades. He has served the National Language Authority for 30 years.

Dr Durrani, who has paved the way for exploring the synergy of the language, believes that the nation needs the Urdu linguistic experts to further the progress in Pakistani Urdu, Technical Urdu and Urdu Informatics and Urdu Terminology Science.

“I have contributed what I can do to set the tone for Urdu language to take it beyond a communication source for literature. I have the pride to play a key role in initiating the Urdu informatics that has made possible data processing in Urdu, and keeping up the Urdu dictionaries and thesaurus, books and other documents online accessible for the Urdu users and researchers across the globe,” said Dr Durrani while highlighting his most valuable addition to the Urdu language development.

He was of the view that the authorities assigned for Urdu language development should concentrate on language planning, including its script and terminology development, thesauri building to nomenclature of science and technology, and to add 95 percent of knowledge body to the language from the excluded subjects.

Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk

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