Creation of the electronic writing system in the languages of the Russian Federation, which are considered official, will cost no more than 1 milliard rubles. This was announced by the chief manager of OAO “Linux Ink” Leonid Soms on the international conference “Minor languages in computer technologies: experience, goals, and prospects”, which took place in April 25, as it was reported by the correspondent of the media centre FINUGOR.

Today 23 languages of the Russian Federation have a status of official language in the national republics and areas. But what will remain of them in the future? – asks L. Soms.

“The languages should be in demand, - this concerns questions of politics, national identity, economics, and ‘mother tongue’ fashion, - I do not even talk about it. Anyway, having the necessary technological facilities for functioning of these languages in the sphere of IT is also of great importance”.

In the range of the most urgent tasks are creation and standardization of the national prints and keyboard layouts – “Paratype” company succeeds in doing this job.

There is also a need in generally available electronic dictionaries under the free license, automatic spelling check-up systems, search systems in the national languages, multilingual systems of automatic translation.

“The state of things is not at all satisfactory at the federal level, - stated L. Soms. There is a lack of state projects devoted to informatization of the non-Russian official languages. There is a famous project aimed at creating of a package of free software for the sphere of education in the Russian Federation, but all attempts of our company to persuade sponsor to involve the national component were met with a refusal”.