Researchers aim to nearly double the number of Tibetan typefaces this year. Photo: Li Hao/GT

Tashi Tsering's daily routine as an information technology (IT) researcher at China Tibetology Research Center is not an easy one. His work, along with that of a small number of other researchers, determines how to bring one of the oldest languages in the world into the digital age.

The Tibetan language has a history of more than 1,300 years and is still used as a basic tool of communication in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Now that computers and the Internet have become increasingly accessible to Tibetans, digitizing the Tibetan language has become an urgent task and a tedious one.

"It takes four engineers to work very hard for at least three months to design one Tibetan typeface," Tashi Tsering said. "We have to make about 1,500 to 2,000 frequently used characters. In written Tibetan, there are many varieties of strokes that link different characters, which makes our job harder."

His efforts began in 1985 when he was studying at Tsinghua University, shortly after the first IBM personal computer had been produced.

"After I saw that Chinese characters could be inputted in the computer, I started to think about whether I could input Tibetan characters too," he said.

At that time, there were several kinds of Tibetan character input software, but there was not an international standard. The different input methods conflicted with each other and caused unreadable codes on websites using Tibetan language. In 1997, Tashi Tsering joined a research group at Tibet University in Lhasa to develop an international standard for Tibetan characters, and in 2003, he cooperated with Microsoft to develop the first standardized character input method.

Since then, there have been 10 Tibetan typefaces developed for the Microsoft operating system, and Tashi Tsering plans to extend that to 17 by 2015. The new typefaces include characters based on Tibetan in the Dunhuang manuscripts that date from the 5th to 11th centuries.

These new typefaces mean better matching of forms between digital Tibetan documents and traditional ones, which will educate others about the language, Tashi Tsering said.

Tashi Tsering also led a team that compiled a dictionary of IT terms in Tibetan, Chinese, and English.

"As the IT industry was developing, we had no official Tibetan dictionary of terms," web designer Phenpa Kyalp said. "It so useful for us to learn about multiple aspects of IT."

Access to a variety of Tibetan digital typefaces has also made it easier for people to create websites in Tibetan. Phenpa Kyalp established tibetitw.com in 2007, a website offering technology support for other Tibetan websites, including tibetcm.com, a website about Tibetan literature, bosubtitle.com, which has information on doing film subtitling in Tibetan, and regongart.com, which introduces Tibetan religious culture and arts.

Some Tibetans have also turned to the WeChat messaging app to use the language. Last year, the public account "tbsheep" in both Chinese and Tibetan went online, aiming to introduce Tibetan modern culture and literature.

"I am glad to see more Tibetan language online because it's very helpful in educating people about our culture," said Tenzin Norbu, a Tibetan tour guide working between Beijing and Tibet. "This is key to establishing mutual understanding and long-term friendship between the Tibetan people, the Han people, and other minority groups in China."

Editor: Lucia Su