article Sarah Aslam MA

Sindhi Language Authority

 Article by Sarah Aslam

The Sindhi Language Authority (SLA) is an organization that is solely dedicated towards the preservation, teaching, promotion and development of the Sindhi language, which is one of the widely spoken languages of Pakistan. The department is mainly involved in the monitoring of Sindhi language in all forms of text, newspapers books etc., promotion of Sindhi language, the writers and their books and the inauguration of books. SLA has a total of 7 sections working for different departments of the organization. 

In addition to the translation, trans-literation and the promotion of Sindhi, the department of Informatics, Abdul-Majid Bhurgri institute of Sindhi computing (SLA) has worked on an enormous level to ensure the promotion of the Sindhi language among the today's generation through the use of web portals; it includes Asia's largest dictionary portal. For this purpose, the department has produced CDs in different categories such as, Sindhi dictionary, Sindhi songs, official terminology in Sindhi language, Sindhi songs for children and Sindhi word processor, that are easily available at Qaleech book house, SLA.  

Consecutively, there are a total of twelve android apps produced by SLA that are easily available on google play which include dictionaries of different education fields such as hematology, medical science, geography, international affairs, commerce & banking, English to Sindhi dictionary, dictionary of official terms and a hand-book of Sindhi idioms. The print technology dictionary app is a dictionary specially formulated for the students of journalism and mass communication and professionals of related fields. It includes more than 4375 words and terms of mass communication. 

Additionally, the online thesaurus can easily convert Sindhi to English and English to Sindhi into vocabulary, proverbs and professional terminology. This is the first Sindhi-English portal where you can access more than 0.3 million words compiled from various dictionaries published by the SLA.  

The online kid's portal is an interactive website by the SLA that includes the Sindhi poems and songs sung by numerous singers. It is specially aimed towards the students of government schools. Progressively, the online encyclopedia, Sindhiana that includes the historical references comes with a built-in automatic Sindhi keyboard search and is also available in CD and bookform. The online virtual library known as the Sindhi virtual library includes all the books published by the SLA in a sequential manner and will be available in several electronic formats in the near future. 

Another project by the SLA is the interactive multimedia online Sindhi learning portal, a web-based training program that aims to teach Sindhi to the non-Sindhi speaker in a simplified manner. The lessons include an extensive range of lessons, from the basic alphabets to sentences, grammar, literature and writing with grammar and audio pronunciations. The lessons are also available in a recorded audio produced with the co-operation of radio Pakistan and are also available in a CD. 

The SLA has also created a Sindhi auto-keyboard app with the help of swift key, is an input method for Android and iOS devices,which simplifies the use of Sindhi on smart phones, which not only includes the conversational daily usage words and sentences but also a fully-fledged database of Sindhi sayings and proverbs. SLA has also initiated the process of parsing Sindhi language, i-e breaking down a sentence in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying its parts of speech in both Sindhi and English, which will help in the further understanding and clarification of the construction of sentences for the non-Sindhi as well as the native speaker. It is through the efforts of the SLA; the Sindhi language translation is now available on google with almost 7 lac meanings of words, making Sindhi language, Asia's biggest language among the others.

The Sindhi OCR (Optical character recognition) is another innovative step taken by the institute of computing, SLA, under the efforts of I.T consultant Mr. Amar fayazburiro and his team. Introduced on the international mother language day, 21 February 2017, first of the Sindhi language, OCR is a free service that allows the user to convert scanned documents, images and screenshots into easily editable text format.

The SLA also organizes events for the district wise training of the Sindhi teachers of the government schools which ensures a proper ability in the Sindhi teachers to utilize the Sindhi language to its full potential.

Sindhi Language Authority plans to carry its developmental activities by introducing a multitude of courses this year after Eid-ul-Azha. The courses include basic courses such as, Sindhi computing; composing and basics of MSoffice, CIT, DIT, Graphic and Sindhi font development courses and professional courses that include PHP, java programming, android mobile application, html and CSS scripting. SLA is devising to receive permission from Sindhi textbook board to attain its affiliation in order to provide certification through its co-operation.

SLA is also an active member of the social media which can be contacted through their page on Facebook and a twitter account.