Developments in computing software in Pakistan include language engineering. By the way, you must have heard different fields of engineering, but the field of language engineering is not common here, but it is developing rapidly in the world.

Now fortunately, this work has also started in Pakistan, by which the popular languages in Pakistan will develop in the world of computing as well.

What is language engineering?

It is important to clarify this point before proceeding. Language engineering is related to the techniques used in computers.

This can be further explained by saying that a recent trend of language engineering is to make languages usable in machines, computers, and artificial intelligence and to create words, sentences, and ideas, save them, and pass them through various technologies.

Applications of Language Engineering

Google that translates into different languages or the words of languages into written form or machines that follow written or spoken instructions in any language is the result of language engineering.

This is not an easy task because computers or machines basically do not know any language, but they only communicate specific codes of computers.

How computers Learn Languages

It is with the help of these codes that computers or machines are taught any language, based on which computers or machines can write or speak that language and understand and translate words of different languages.

Where Google has made many language models using artificial intelligence in its translation system and has made the Quran capable of translation without internet, i.e., offline. These include Urdu and Sindhi among the languages of Pakistan.

Google has given artificial intelligence support to the new translation system, which has greatly improved the quality of translation. For example, Google used to translate words one by one, then borrow sentences from the grammar word order to form sentences provided by the community as models. 

This method was not so reliable. This often led to incorrect translations of sentences. But now Google puts the entire text of any 5,000-word article in front of you by taking the help of pre-existing meanings, then comparing it with sentences found in a database on the Internet, and then completing the translation through artificial intelligence. 

This entire long and complicated journey to translation is completed in one fiftieth of a second. Google works with about three billion people like you around the world every second. Until now, language engineering of major languages was done in developed countries, but after artificial intelligence, the need and importance of language engineering have increased even more in the world.

Evolution of Language Engineering in Pakistan

We have been writing Urdu, Sindhi, and Pashto languages on computers for decades in Pakistan and the world. But in modern times, more steps are needed to make languages usable by machines.

Fortunately, realising this need, institutions have been established in Pakistan for language engineering of Urdu and Sindhi languages and awareness of the use of languages in computing. 

Related Article: Lord Macaulay's System of Education in India.

Language Engineering Institutes in Pakistan

One university-based research centre for Linguistics is the Computing Institute of Urdu and Other Languages, while the other is the Abdul Majid Bhurgari Institute of Language Engineering (EMBL) on behalf of the Department of Culture, Tourism, Antiquities, and Archives of the Government of Sindh. This institute has been established by the PDMI Cell of the Department of Culture.

Research is being done on the points of Urdu language in the Institute of Urdu Language Engineering established in the University of Lahore.

Centre for Research Linguistics (CLE), the centre is active in organising and participating effectively in seminars, workshops, and conferences for the advancement of language processing at the national and international level.

This work will lead to the development of computing in the respective languages. The aim of CLE is to provide opportunities for the local population to access and communicate information in their local languages and to enable them to use information for their socio-economic benefit.

CLE has an active team of graduate students and full-time research staff, including linguists, sociologists, computer scientists, and engineers who strive to achieve these goals. This institute is doing major work in language computing research.

Sindhi language can be typed and used on any computer, laptop, and mobile phone in any part of the world. The Abdul Majid Bhurgari Institute of Language Engineering Act was passed by the Sindh Assembly on 15 June 2021.

After the establishment of the institute, several projects were simultaneously launched to bring Sindhi to meet modern needs in computing, which resulted in major achievements in bringing Sindhi into machine systems last year. Including Sindhi language in Microsoft's translation system. Now technical efforts are being made to integrate Sindhi into artificial intelligence.

Future Prospects for Language Engineering in Pakistan

Urdu and Sindhi are the two languages of Pakistan, which have language engineering institutes and are developing day by day in the world of computing. The day is not far when both languages will be understood and used by robots.

Not only Urdu and Sindhi, but all the written readable languages of Pakistan can be made familiar by artificial intelligence by transferring them to the computer. 

Role of Universities in Advancing Language Engineering

In this regard, the relevant institutions will have to come forward and play their role, through which all the writing, reading, and spoken languages of Pakistan can be developed to take the people further and to keep pace with the world. .

With the help of two institutes of language engineering established in Pakistan, more such institutes can be established, because in the modern world we will have to come to language engineering to keep up with the development of technology. In this regard, the universities established in Pakistan can play an important role.