4.0155 Asian/N.African Conference Info/Request (1/80)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 31 May 90 17:47:01 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0155. Thursday, 31 May 1990.
Date: Thu, 31 May 90 14:25:20 EDT
From: "PATANJALI S. VENKATACHARYA" <VENKAT@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Asian/North African Conference needs multilingual wp information
Dear Members of HUMANIST,
The International Congress of Asian and North African Studies is a
triennial/quadrennial gathering of scholars in the humanities and social
sciences dealing with East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the
Middle East. It has been compared to the Olympic Games in the
Asian-studies field, in that for a century (formerly known as the
International Congress of Orientalists) it has met once every three or
four years somewhere in the world, attracting top-level talent.
The next Congress will be in Toronto, on the campus of the University of
Toronto, during the third week of this coming August. The program theme
of the Congress will be "Contacts between Cultures". This will be the
first time ever for the Congress in Canada, and only the third time in
the Western Hemisphere; it was in the United States in 1967 and in
Mexico in 1976, and will not likely return to the Americas until the
next century. On the basis of responses received so far, we expect an
attendance of at least one thousand scholars from around the world :
half from the Western Hemisphere and half from Europe and Asia.
As part of the Congress proceedings a special seminar and presentation
on "Multilingual Word Processing" is being organised. As well, a
publication is being developed that will contain detailed descriptions
of present multilingual software for IBM and Macintosh PC-based systems.
As members of HUMANIST, I am sure that many of you currently use some
form of multilingual word processing package. The package(s) you
currently use may be those that assist in implementing english
diacritical marks (especially for transliterated text), and/or create
and edit foreign-language text documents (such as transliterated
Sanskrit, or Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese word processors; just to name a
few)
I am a new member to this discussion group, and from people such as
Willard McCarty and John Bradley (UofT) I am told that many of you could
be of some help to me in this situation.
As you may know, there are a growing number of multilingual word
processors and similar packages that go unheard of among even the most
up-to-date computer groups. I am currently looking for more software
developers/distributors to contact to obtain more information on such
software, and also request submissions for this publication. I am also
looking for comments on software packages from people who have been
using word processing packages of this type (noted above). I also
understand many of you are currently conducting research or have
conducted some research in the area of foreign-language word processing,
and your comments would be very helpful as well.
I would be very grateful if those of you who use multilingual word
processing packages (for IBM PC and Macintosh computers) could "flood"
me with some helpful information at this address : VENKAT@UTOREPAS
If you would like more information on the Congress, or on this
particular event in the Congress, please also be free to contact me at :
(416) 494-2933 or (416) 585-4578, or FAX at : (416) 585-4584.
Thanks, and hope other HUMANIST members can be of some help !!!!!
Patanjali S. Venkatacharya,
Multilingual Computing Consultant,
33rd International Congress of
Asian & North African Studies,
The University of Toronto, Canada
E-Mail : VENKAT@UTOREPAS