Pakistani-Americans Release 1700 Urdu Videos on Khan Academy

[Riaz Haq]

Guest Post by Ali H. Cemendtaur

Koshish Foundation, a Silicon-Valley based non-profit corporation (Chairman, Suhail Akbar) with a strong presence in Pakistan where it works on education-related projects, has announced the completion of over 1700 math and basic science videos that are Urdu translations of the Khan Academy tutorials. These math and basic science videos can enable students learn Grade 3 to Grade 12 level math, chemistry, physics, and biology in Urdu.

Funding for the video translation work was provided by renowned Pakistani-American technologist and philanthropist Safi Qureshey, with Bilal Musharraf, Khan Academy’s Dean of Translations, acting as the liaison between Safi Qureshey and the Koshish Foundation.
Safi Qureshey rose to fame in 1992 when AST, a computer company in California he co-founded with two partners, entered the list of Fortune 500 companies. Qureshey was the first Pakistani to walk the path of entrepreneurship in computer technology in the US, and he was the pride of his country of birth. Pakistanis in general and Karachiites in particular took Qureshey’s international success with teary-eyed pride.

Source: AppAppeal as of April 10, 2014. Note: Youtube is blocked in...

This scribe remembers seeing billboards with Safi Qureshey’s picture along Shahrah-e-Faisal in Karachi. Qureshey has definitely been an inspiration in one way or another for today’s large pool of Pakistani Americans starting up their own businesses, putting hard work in them, and taking them to success.
Safi Qureshey realizes the importance of education and has been helping out people and institutions focusing on primary education in Pakistan. Muhammad Mahboob Akhter, a long term associate of Safi Qureshey, helps Qureshey in identifying and supporting education causes. In 2000-2001 Safi Qureshey provided funds for educational TV program ‘Khul Ja Sim Sim’ (popular US "Sesame Street" shows localized in Urdu for young TV viewers in Pakistan).

Koshish Foundation’s Urdu translation work of the Khan Academy videos—funded by Safi Qureshey--is being done by two top-notch translators in Karachi: Aleem Ahmed of the Global Science magazine and Zeeshan Hyder.
Currently there is a ban on YouTube in Pakistan. Since the original Khan Academy videos and their Urdu translations are hosted at YouTube, very few students in Pakistan can access this educational resource. (A few Urdu videos are available on Dailymotion).  Even when access to YouTube is restored in Pakistan, a large number of students not connected to the Internet will not be able to reach these educational videos.

Koshish Foundation views a different way its work will be utilized in Pakistan. Koshish sees non-profit organizations and conscientious citizens downloading this material on their computers and using it to run their own schools with minimum operating expenses. All they need will be a classroom, a computer with downloaded videos on it, and a projector; a chaperone can oversee the students and the learning process. When better resources are available students can be given computers to do related practice exercises.

Ali Hasan Cemendtaur, the author of this post, is a Silicon Valley blogger and writer. Ali appears with me on the weekly Viewpoint From Overseas show recorded in Silicon Valley. Ali has been instrumental in Microsoft's support of Urdu fonts on Microsoft Word, and he is currently managing Urdu translations of videos at Khan Academy. Ali is a friend and a fellow NED University alumnus. 

Here's an example of Khan Academy Urdu video:


20-Solving equations and inequalities through... by khanacademyurdu
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Upwardly Mobile Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

Based on Alexa traffic data, updated on 10 Apr 2014 at 01:24 GMT.

In spite of the fact that Youtube is blocked in Pakistan, 1.3% of the Khan Academy.org users come from Pakistan and they generate 0.7% of the pageviews on Khan Academy.org.

http://www.appappeal.com/maps/khan-academy-org

[Riaz Haq]

#Urdu version of Whatsapp soon to be launched in #Pakistan http://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/technology/urdu-version-of-whatsapp-...

Whatsapp for androids has been fully translated into Urdu and will soon be launched in Pakistan.

This milestone is achieved by Ahsan Saeed who works as a Translation Administrator for WhatsApp, the Tech Juice reported.

Ahsan, along with his team of hardworking volunteers, translated 753 strings and moderated 2089 strings in less than three months.

With this achievement, Urdu has become the 18th language that Whatsapp has been officially translated to.

After the announcement of translation of all government websites into Urdu, the Urdu version of Whatsapp targets a wider local audience.

With the increased usage of 3G/4G mobile internet and smartphones, a huge chunk of population will be able to get the advantage of the messaging which failed to do so otherwise due to the language barrier.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan minister confirms the country is switching to #Urdu, dropping #English as official language http://ti.me/1DMF3KB via @TIMEWorld Pakistan is dropping English as its official language and switching to Urdu, a popular language in the Indian subcontinent.

The long-rumored change was confirmed by Pakistani Minister of Planning, National Reforms, and Development Ahsan Iqbal in an exclusive interview with TIME.

Iqbal said the change was being made because of a court directive. The Pakistani constitution, which was passed in 1973, included a clause specifying that the government must make Urdu the national language within 15 years, but it had not been enforced.

Still, Iqbal said the country is not entirely abandoning English, which will still be taught alongside Urdu in schools.

“It means Urdu will be a second medium of language and all official business will be bilingual,” he said.

Some Pakistanis fear that the move is part of an official backlash against the younger generation, which has been more open to Western culture.

But Iqbal argued that the move would help make Pakistan more democratic, since it will “help provide greater participation to people who don’t know English, hence making the government more inclusive.”

Urdu is just one of a number of languages spoken in Pakistan, but it retains a cultural cachet as the language of movies and music as well as the Islamic religion, while English has been more popular among elites and government ministries.

According to the CIA Factbook, nearly half of Pakistanis speak Punjabi, the language of the Punjab region, while only 8% speak Urdu. Several other languages are spoken by a fraction of the population.

The decision to break away from English creates a stark contrast with Pakistan’s neighbor and longtime rival India. English was the official language of the area that now comprises both countries under British rule, which ended in 1947.

Despite a similar language clause in its constitution, India continues to use both English and Hindi as its official languages.

[Riaz Haq]

Google adds voice support on web for #Urdu, 29 other languages spoken in #Africa, #India, #Pakistan | TechCrunch

Google today is expanding its speech recognition capabilities to support dozens of new languages, particularly those in emerging markets in India and Africa, the company announced this morning. That means more people around the world will gain the ability to search the web by voice as well as type via voice using Google’s keyboard app, Gboard.

The company says with the update, it’s adding 30 languages and locales around the world, bringing the total supported to 119. The update includes 8 more Indian languages, as well as Swahili and Amharic, two of Africa’s largest languages.

The new speech recognition will be initially supported in Gboard for Android and Voice Search. U.S. English speakers, meanwhile, can now use voice dictation to express themselves using emojis, too. (e.g. you can just say “winky face emoji” instead of hunting for it.)

The new languages are also available today in the Cloud Speech API, which already supported 89 languages, and is used in a number of third-party voice and video applications, like transcription services, speech analytics applications, IVR applications, and more.

In time, the new languages will be added to other Google products, including the Google Translate app.

However, the more critical part of this news is what this means for those in emerging markets – regions that are often ignored when it comes to being among the first to gain access to new technology advances from tech giants.

But with mobile, that’s changed. Tech companies are now aiming to establish footholds in these regions, as the next large swath of internet users come online.

In India, especially, Google’s move to expand speech recognition tech could have a significant impact. The country is estimated to have some 420 million mobile internet users as of this June, making India one of the biggest markets in the world for companies like Apple, Google and Facebook to address.

Google’s expansion with voice technology also comes shortly after a piece in The Wall Street Journal detailed how tech companies are rethinking their products for the developing world – in particular, how the next billion mobile users will heavily take advantage of technologies like video and voice. Google, for example, told The WSJ, that it’s been seeing “a new kind of internet user” – a group that’s “very different from the first billion” in terms of how they access the web.

To develop speech recognition capabilities for these new languages, Google combined human labor with its machine learning technology.

The company says that it works with native speakers to collect speech samples by asking them to read common phrases. This, in turn, helped to train Google’s machine learning models to better understand the sounds and words of the new languages to improve their accuracy when they were exposed to more examples over time.

The full list of new languages includes the following:

Amharic (Ethiopia)
Armenian (Armenia)
Azerbaijani (Azerbaijani)
Bengali (Bangladesh, India)
English (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania)
Georgian (Georgia)
Gujarati (India)
Javanese (Indonesia)
Kannada (India)
Khmer (Cambodian)
Lao (Laos)
Latvian (Latvia)
Malayalam (India)
Marathi (India)
Nepali (Nepal)
Sinhala (Sri Lanka)
Sundanese (Indonesia)
Swahili (Tanzania, Kenya)
Tamil (India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia)
Telugu (India)
Urdu (Pakistan, India)

[Riaz Haq]

#Online #education program launched in 14 #kpk districts of #Pakistan: #Peshawar, #Charsadda, #Swabi, #Nowshera, #Mardan, #Mansehra, #Abbottabad, #Swat, Dir, Chitral, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat at 150 schools 16,000 students. #PTI #ImranKhan 
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/413797-online-education-programme-...

Online education programme - tele-education - has been launched in 14 districts of the province under which the students of grades-4 and 5 would be taught English, mathematics and science subjects online.

For the purpose, 150 schools have been selected where 16,000 students would be imparted education. “Sixty percent of the students taking benefit of the programme are girls,” said Zulfiqar Ahmad, managing director of the Elementary and Secondary Education Foundation (ESEF).

The programme has been jointly launched by ESEF, DFID, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and Tele-education Organisation. It is being launched in Peshawar, Charsadda, Swabi, Nowshera, Mardan, Mansehra, Abbottabad, Swat, Dir, Chitral, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat.

The official said the computer labs would be established in the schools where the online classes would be arranged. Teachers sitting in Islamabad would deliver online lectures at the schools.

He said the programme had already been launched in some areas of Chitral, Dir and other districts and within a short span of time the interest of the students had increased.

The official said monthly monitoring of the programme is done and the students have shown enough improvement in the subjects they are taught online. He said the curriculum of government schools is taught in the online classes.

The official said in some schools of Chitral and Dir Lower, the project has already been completed and due to the successful results, it has been extended for another two years. The project continued for nine months in different schools in Chitral.