Efforts on to find Tamil equivalent of technical terms

Coimbatore: While 92% of government departments in the district are adhering to the Tamil official language norms laid down by the Tamil Nadu Official Language Act, 1956, the rest, including the health department and the electricity board, continue to use technical terms in English extensively, officials of the Tamil development department, who are attending the two-day annual official language workshop for government officials that began in the city on Thursday, said.
According to the Act, all written communications and records should be in Tamil. “Signatures, nameplates, circulars and word processors in computers should be in Tamil,” said an official.
In order to implement the rule in the departments that are still lagging, the officials have been conducting annual workshops and gathering technical terms for which there are no proper Tamil equivalents. “From time to time, we represent these terms to a team of scholars, who come up with Tamil equivalents,” he said.
While the initiative is antagonistic to English, it aims to make government circulars and communications accessible even to people from the lowest rungs of society, the official said. “If a person, who doesn’t know English, gives a petition or a representation, he should be able to comprehend the reply given by a government office in return.”
The officials also inspect government offices twice a year to check whether the circulars, forms and records are in Tamil and whether the officials are signing in Tamil. “If we find violations, we would warn them. If it is repeated, we would record it,” the official added.
As many as 140 officials from various government departments and boards are attending the workshop.