HYDERABAD: If all goes well, you can soon surf the Net in Telugu.
The State government has recently taken membership in Unicode consortium to promote Telugu in the virtual world.
The project, titled Telugu Victory, as and when it materialises will enable native speakers use gmail, facebook and browse any other website in Telugu.
The nitty-gritty of the project will be thrashed out at a three-day meeting in California beginning Sept 27.
Telugu is the fourth language in India to get Unicode consortium after Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, and is 14th in the world as far as first languages are concerned.
“The State government will spend Rs. 61 lakh on the project,” Minister for Information Technology Ponnala Lakshmaiah announced at a press conference here on Thursday.
The project will be executed by Siliconandhra, a US-based organisation that promotes Telugu culture and literature.
The government will form a technical advisory committee and hold a meeting on Sept 13 in Hyderabad to make some plans and will also be hosting the meeting in California to which about 200 technical experts will attend.
“The aim of the project is to promote Telugu language and its culture.
The technical advisory committee will select six fonts of Telugu letters,” said Anand Kuchibhotla, founder and president of Siliconandhra.
“It is time to use technology to protect and spread Telugu culture and language as everything depends on technology,” he added.
Former minister Mandali Buddha Prasad, Prof Uma Mahesh of the University of Hyderabad, former minister Yarlagadda Lashmi Prasad were also present.