Engineer Tran Thanh Binh often had second thoughts about building his typing
software for ethnic languages, code-named Vnkey. It was four hard years of
studying and collecting and collating in mountain village and universities.

Software engineer Tran Thanh Binh from the Central Highland province of Dak Lak has developed a programme that translates the languages of 12 ethnic groups in Viet Nam. (Photo: VNS)

Sometimes Central Highlands academic Binh became discouraged but his love of the
ethnic groups in his area drove him on to success.

And
after the Vnkey software became available nation-wide, users hailed him as a
“cultural hero” and praised his love for ethnic languages and his great passion
for IT. Vnkey provides typing facilities for languages of the 12 ethnic groups
such as Ede, Bana, M’nong, San only, K’ho, J’rai

In 2010,
Binh received a Viet Nam Talent Award for producing the software, a major
milestone for the Hue city university graduate who was drawn by his passion for the
highland people to teach at their Tay Nguyen University.

Binh
said it was there he got the idea to build the typing software to support
education and civil management.

He had
found during his many years in remote areas that ethnic people learned best in
their own language and there was a need for something to help them understand
their lessons.

He also
realised that commune officials had difficulties typing information of ethnic
people into their data banks, such as names, addresses.

In four
years from 2003, Binh studied the languages and coded Vnkey, spending all his
savings and salary to buy resource materials.

He
called on IT experts and researchers of ethnic group languages to help him
research digital information because in Viet Nam there was no Vietnamese
multilingual keyboard. The first typing version was published in 2007.

“Vnkey
is an integrated software which required high technology knowledge and
enthusiasm to create,” Binh said. “I was determined to build it as a gift to the
ethnic groups.”

Le Van
Thuat, officer of Krong Bong District’s Yangreh Commune, said, “Binh came to my
commune many times to install new processes and debug mistakes. He was very
enthusiastic to improve Vnkey.

“He has
made it very user-friendly and it improves my speed and accuracy. Before Vnkey
was built, all information had to be written by hand. It was very laborious and
difficult.”

Vinkey
is used by a great number of people including students, staff in 165 wards and
more than 2,800 merchants in villages of the Central Highland province of Dak
Lak.

The
typing application also helps to break the language barrier for teachers who can
now type bilingual lessons, said Ysaphone Nie Knong, vice-headmaster of the
Highland Nationalities Vocational College.

After
Vnkey, Binh continued to code the Tay Nguyen dictionary which focused on ethnic
minorities, including Viet-Ede, Viet-M’Nong, Viet-J’rai, Viet-Bana with
thousands of fascinating illustrations.

Y Ghi
Nie, director of the Dak Lak Department of Science and Technology, said Binh
knew little about Ede and Bana languages. To code the dictionary application, he
went through a steep learning curve and had to seek the help of language
consultants.

The
dictionary has an integrated Vnkey typing application; there is no need to
install Vnkey, Nie said.

Pham
Thanh Liem, director of Dak Lak Centre for Computing and Information Science and
Technology, said the full multi-media dictionary application was “precious”.

Vnkey
had promoted Binh to cultural hero status for preserving the intangible cultural
heritage of the country and humanity, Liem said.

“This is
my brain-child,” Binh said proudly. “Now, everyday, there are about 1000
internet visitors to the Vnkey site link http://www.pcworld. com.vn

“I
wished to give people a useful tool with an on-line application, so I am pleased
to be supported by user communities.”

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News

Footnote: Vnkey 2010 is able to run on all Windows generations including
Windows Vista, Windows 7 32-bit, 64 bit and takes only 1.2 Mb storage.