To run its production and management operations in an organized and professional manner, media is becoming heavily dependent on technology, especially information technology. However, being a commercially sensitive sector, Indian media, and more so the language media is not very forthcoming in adopting the latest till its usefulness is fully proved and prices come down to a reasonable level. There are very few instances of language media carrying out any significant experimentation with technology. It generally prefers to continue with the traditional setup, till such changes become indispensable, citing logistical and financial constraints as the reason. After the arrival of Unicode, the path breaking text encoding standard which is bound to metamorphose the way computing is done worldwide, Indian language media is again finding itself in the state of indecisiveness. Even those who realize the importance of Unicode and are aware of the benefits its adoption will bring don’t look very comfortable to answer questions such as how soon they are going to convert. Apart from the financial implications involved, ignorance of larger issues and possibilities seem to be behind their inability to take an early decision.
We, as people fully convinced about the fact that Unicode unquestionably holds the key for future computing have a responsibility to educate language media on Unicode related issues in their entirety. People running language media are not going to take the plunge until they are fully sure that 1) they can no longer ignore Unicode, and 2) they are not going to be at loss since such conversion will bring immense logistical and financial benefits to them in the long run.
How will media benefit?
Most important benefit of such a universal adoption of Unicode is going to be standardization of stored data, which will allow these organizations to re-use it in different forms in different media. Research in IT has allowed data to break free of the ‘format limitations’ which has become inter-changeable between text and audio, audio and video, video and text, text and animation etc. Unless it changes its mindset, language media would simply not be in a position to take advantage of these technological marvels due to a lack of standardization. Such technical advancements, which are becoming commonplace in English (Ananova is one wonderful example), may transfer to Indian languages should we standardize the way we compute.
However, if we continue to use umpteen numbers of fonts and keyboards, technology developers would find if very difficult to take advantage of such advancements. Hundreds of developers working in different directions to suit requirements of people working in their own ‘preferred formats’ will not help either the media or the IT industry. If we want to utilize full potential of the IT revolution, we have to ensure a common way of working with it, as the first step. That step could be Unicode.
Standardization of data storage will make technologies such as inter Indian-languages translation and translation between English and Indian languages comparatively easier, and this could be a boom for Indian language media which sources most of its content from English, or sometimes from fellow Indian languages. In such situations, technology will allow media to expand across languages. Look at the example of Dainik Bhaskar, originally a Hindi daily, which has now successfully brought out newspapers in English and Gujarati as well. Intra-language translation systems based on Unicode could prove godsend for such newspaper organizations, and may open doors of expansion for others too. Such expansions will not only be easier than they are today, but they would also save and generate a lot of hard cash.
Money will be generated not wasted
A common standard would come handy in establishment of news pools or news exchange systems for sharing news between media organizations of different kind and different languages. Sharing content with Internet and over it would become easier and would pave way for development of automated intelligent data conversion systems to utilize data available on Internet for use in offline media. In Indian media, flow of content is presently from Offline to Online only. Universal adoption of Unicode could completely alter this situation making it beneficial for all.
Unicode, just like XML, can also work as glue between completely dissimilar systems and different applications to make optimum use of the diversity and strengths of information technology. We know, a Macintosh handles graphics better while a Unix network is considered more efficient and less resource hungry. Similarly, a Microsoft Windows operating system and its office software are unquestionably better than their counterparts running on PC machines. Unicode as a common element may ensure that we use all of them as one large system to get best results for our publications.
Making language content available on search engines (which Unicode will ensure), rescuing language websites from regular technical glitches, ensuring better data organization through advanced sorting, indexing and search algorithms are other benefits that adoption of Unicode will bring for media. However, the most important of them all is the power to expand, the ability to work across different forms of media and languages, to enjoy the unlimited technical potential brought by artificial intelligence, to gain access to content created by others and to share prosperity generated by technology, is what makes Unicode an opportune choice for the language media.