-Bikram M. Baruah, Coordinator, XOBDO.
Sometime in early 2006, in the
middle of the Arabian Desert I was enjoying the life of a forced single. Now
read this as a life with plenty of extra time to spare on your hobbies!! I used
that extra time to write some short-stories, articles etc. In the process, I
often had to look through bulky Assamese dictionaries, which was quite
frustrating for me. Out of desperation, I googled “Online Assamese Dictionary”,
not surprisingly nothing useful came up. Then I googled “Online Bengali
Dictionary” and at least 5 results popped-up. So was the case with Hindi,
Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil and other Indian languages.
This
prompted me to try out some small experiments with my laptop and a website I
already had – www.baruah.in. After few
sleepless nights, the experiment clicked!! Far away from its homeland in Assam,
Poob-Nagari or Eastern Nagari script appeared in the cyberspace. It was nothing
extra-ordinary; there were already thousands of websites in Eastern Nagari
script. What was unique about this experiment was that those scripts came out
from an underlying structured database and dynamically presented to the user
based on his/her queries!! Another important aspect of this experiment was that
the script was based on UNICODE, an international standard of various writing
systems of the world. Thus, the online Assamese dictionary came to being and
the journey began. On March 10, 2006 an email
was sent out to the AssamNet
with an announcement of the dictionary.
The
Growth
I
am neither a professional programmer, nor database administrator or not even a
linguist. To be successful, the online dictionary needed expertise of all these
different fields of people. Fortunately, a ‘hidden force’ drew all the kind of
expertise needed for such project to be successful. Priyankoo Sharma, Pallav
Saikia, PKD, Ujjwal Saikia initially joined the gang. Gradually more and more
people joined in the endeavor. Many people left (or become silent), however,
the saga continued. With relentless efforts from Priyankoo, the group continued
to have the much needed vitality. He is also instrumental in the publicity of
XOBDO, an important area that I always shied away from. Working behind the
scene, Pallav Saikia, provided and is still continuing to provide the technical
know-how to keep the “heart” of XOBDO, the database, beating. Ujjwal Saikia, an
engineering student, assisted in developing some initial parts of the website.
In the initial stages of XOBDO Dipankar M. Barua, Dwaipayan Bora, Apurba Mili
from Duliajan, Rajib Kr. Dutta of Jorhat, Nilotpal Borpujari from Moscow (now
in Dubai), Kishor Kumar Barman and Rubut Maout of TIFR, Mumbai, Hasinus Sultan
of Nagaon, Rupam Kumar Sharma from S. Korea, Reshmi Rekha Dutta from Guwhati,
Sudipta Gogoi of NIT, Warangal and Anis-Uz-Zaman, CIC, Agomani etc. contributed
and gave an impetus to the development of XOBDO.
A
number of people from IIT-Guwahati also got involved at different points of
time. Buljit Buragohain, Rituraj Saikia, Swapnita Kakati, Archana Rajbonshi,
Sanjib Sarma, Dr (Mrs) Krishna Barua to name a few. With their efforts, a large
number of good words appended to XOBDO. A successful meeting was also held at IIT-Guwahati
campus on 17-Jan-2007 with a good number of attendees. This is the first formal
meeting dedicated to XOBDO.
We
were always in dearth of editors! For a long time, it was only me who
painstakingly carried out the job. Soon Priyankoo took initiative to learn the
process and became a very active editor. Again, we two kept editing and
approving the submissions for a while. With a large number of word
contributions from various quarters, the work-load increased. Among the
contributors, two people were requested to become an editor. Rupankar Mahanta and
Rupkamal Takuldar came on-board and did a tremendous job as contributors and editors.
The
Bridal Make-Up!
“An open dictionary being created by the
people, for the people, of the people” built on Microsoft’s Technology! Why
should we be dependent on a corporate giant? It makes more sense, if this
dictionary is built on a software also developed by “the people”. So, in later parts of 2007, a decision was made to
redesign XOBDO in Open Source technologies.
Switching
the database from Microsoft’s MSSQL to Open Source MySQL was not easy. A lot of
planning and synchronized activities were carried out between Pallav Saikia in
Hyderabad and me in Abu Dhabi with constant feedback from a number of people,
primarily Priyankoo (Florida), Partha (Bhopal), Rajib (Jorhat) and Arup (JNU)
between Aug-Nov, 2007. As we were developing the database from scratch, we took
this opportunity to incorporate a number of new features – encyclopedic
entries, word varieties, subject contexts, related words etc. Pallav did a
fantastic job in transferring the existing data from MSSQL to the newly
developed MySQL database.
We
needed somebody to redevelop the existing frame based webpages that use ASP to
access the database to DIV and stylesheet based webpages that would use PHP to
access the new MySQL database. Nobody in the group knew these new technologies
at that time. We were looking for somebody to help us in this regard. I started
to study these from the resources available in the internet. Priyankoo caught
hold of Sakib Rahman Saikia studying Computer Science in the University of
Florida where Priyankoo, too, was persuing his PhD. Sakib sprung into action…
working day and night for around seven days. Sometime in October he developed
few sample pages in PHP accessing the MySQL database. Finally, I got a break….
following his footsteps, I started to copy the scripts to develop the other
pages. While Sakib and I busied ourselves writing the scripts, Priyankoo helped
maintaining the layout and the theme of the pages using his skill of handling
stylesheets. As usual we received critical review and beta-testing of our work
from members like Rupankar (Delhi), Rupkamal (Mysore).
Thus,
our beloved princess XOBDO got a new look … almost like a bridal make-up! We
wanted to have a grand inauguration event to show off our beloved ‘bride’. We
initiated an effort to have a stall and a release event in the Guwahati Book
Fair. The members based in/around Guwahati were contacted. Almost twenty
volunteers came forward to form a group called “GHY-Team” to organize the
event. Initially Neelotpal and then Kuldeep took the lead to go to Oxom
Prokaxon Porixod and find out the details. Few of them met in Nehru Park,
Panbazar to discuss the details. However, soon we realized that we had to spend
a significant amount of money and effort for it. Looking at the situation, few
members suggested that it was not worthwhile spending so much money. If the
purpose is to get publicity, we could do it in much better way through the web
and other means. Therefore, in spite of the enthusiasm of the members of our
“GHY-Team”, we had to abandon the plan. However, Buljit kept some leaflets in the
stall of Kiron Prakashan, a Dhemaji based publishing house he is closely
associated with.
Very
quietly all the traffics were diverted to the new website sometime in late
November 2007. People gradually started to pour in to visit the ‘bride’.
FASS
(Friends of Assam and Seven Sisters) organized their annual meet in January 2008
and they gave an opportunity to show our ‘bride’ to the public. We took full
advantage of the event. The news media covered the event. As usual, many papers
published lots of incorrect information. However, some did publish very
accurate information. Buljit did a great job in tracking down wrong information
and spreading the correct ones.
Achieving
the 20K goal!
The
year 2008 was dedicated to increase the Assamese word count. We had around 10,200
words at the beginning of the year. We set the target of 20,000 words for the
year. It was not an easy task. We were not just adding words to the database.
For each word, we had to do an semantic analysis, properly write down the
meaning, associate appropriate English words, make sure words or the meaning
were not duplicated and so on. While the honorary volunteers worked hard, an
automated target calculator kept track of how many words needs to add on daily
basis. After successfully maintaining the daily targets by painstaking works of
a large number of people in a very coordinated manner, we accomplished the final
goal of 20000 words 5 days ahead of the dateline. It was a Christmas day and a
jubilant moment for XOBDO. The people who worked to reach this goal were - Biraj
Kumar Kakati, Anjal Borah Anjali Sonowal, Prasanta Borah, Partha P Sarmah,
Prabin Kakat, Prasenjit Khanikar, Priyankoo, Pankaj Bora, Mousumi Hazarika,
Rupankar Mahanta, and Abdul Wahab & Papori Gogoi.
Meanwhile,
during the year, we added few long pending modules: to handle Fokora-Jujonas
(Assamese Proverbs/Idioms), ability to upload images by the contributors, an
integrated discussion form, a voting system to measure the (popularity of)
usages of the words, extensive use of AJAX to make the pages quicker and more
interactive.
Earlier,
all search operations could be done only in English or Assamese. Other
languages were categorized as "Other Languages" ! We felt no language
should be called "Other Language", all the languages of the
North-East should be given equal status at least in XOBDO. Codes were modified
to search from any language to any other language with a seamless interface.
All
these were really big milestones for XOBDO.
The
silent year
The
year 2009 is a relatively quite for XOBDO. Many key members moved from one part
of the globe to another. Many got busy in their personal endeavors.
Nevertheless,
we pushed hard to attract speakers of the North-Eastern languages, especially
Bodo, Karbi, Mising, Dimasa, Meitelon etc. We achieved some success, but not as
expected. We did have some very active members contributing to these languages
– Anjali Sonowal in Tai and Mising langauges; Lalremthang Hmar in Hmar; 
Banlam Warjr in Khasi; Mohen Naorem in Meetelon;
Kulendra Daulagupu, Anuj Phonglosa, Arnab Phonglosa & Uttam Bathati in
Dimasa; Pranab Doley in Mising; Nava Boro, Nwgwt Brahma in Bodo; Morningkeey
Phangcho and Dipak Tumung in Karbi. However, number of members is still very
low.
2009 is not entirely idle. We did
entered around 2500 new words (so far), spent time to quality check and refine
the existing entries by active discussions, had all the Assamese words
pronunciations written in Roman scripts and most importantly, planed and
prepared for a "big way" in 2010 and beyond !!