The role of Roman Urdu in multilingual information retrieval: A regional study

Abstract The rapid demand of information access on internet has created the possibility of retrieving documents in multiple languages. This is even possible if majority of the people are not proficient in the internet main language. Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR) accepts queries in numerous languages and retrieves the results in the demanded language probe by the users. Pakistan is a country where multiple languages are spoken by the population, and Urdu is the national language used internationally. However, the people of Pakistan do not like to use their national language, or the other languages used by the people in Pakistan in the internet search engine. Based on this situation, this study is conducted to explore the needs of MLIR and the role of Roman Urdu in retrieving information on internet in Pakistan. A questionnaire-based web survey is designed and directed to the internet users through the survey link. The researcher does not specify the number of respondents but distributes the link to the people who use internet through E-mail, WhatsApp groups and Facebook. Descriptive statistics by free Online Survey web and IBM SPS statistics are used to analyze the data. Finally a total of 110 participants responded and the researcher detects majority of them use internet daily. They use the internet for educational purpose and gathering information, as well as to socialize or for entertainment. English language is identified as the popular language used for searching information. They have the ability to understand the English language, but use Roman Urdu for socialization and for retrieving information which include audio, video etc. The conclusion of the study reflects that majority of the internet users are young people who have good command of English and their needs are fulfilled by the current multilingual systems. To them, using Urdu and Urdu keyboard characters on the device are difficult. On the other hand, internet users use Roman Urdu for socialization or searching of information and are satisfied with the search results. Therefore, a new multilingual system for searching information is not crucial to them.