The Hindu Business Line : Say it in your own tongue

Go global, but talk local. That's what software vendors are enabling users to do. They can reach family and friends through e-mail in the language of their choice.

DESIKAN'S love for his mother tongue, Tamil, is boundless. So much so that second-year under-graduate student would type out his e-mails in Tamil words using letters of the English alphabet, what you could call transliteration.This was a few months ago.

Today, he sends and receives e-mail in Tamil, thanks to local language computing initiatives by proprietary software vendors such as Microsoft, and open source software developers such as Red Hat.

Severalregional players are aggressively pursuing local language computing and have developed software applications in local languages.

In India, which is a multilingual country with as many as 22 scheduled languages, only 5 per cent of the one billion-plus population can understand English.

So far, vendors have focussed on English-based computing. However, in the last few months, they have expanded focus to tap the rest of the population, says an official of Microsoft Corporation.

According to the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a scientific society of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the ultimate goal of multilingual computing is to make sure technology reaches the common man at his doorstep in his native tongue so that he feels more at home working with it. This will facilitative his active involvement in the whole process of social and economic advancement that technology is expected to bring about.

For example, Rajan in Chennai can send an e-mail in Tamil to his mother Meenakshi in a remote village down south in Tamil Nadu. Meenakshi can collect the message from an Internet kiosk. Thanks to Internet kiosks being set up across the State, the whole process would take just minutes, instead of the days' wait Meenakshi would have had to face earlier. She can also reply in her own language in real time, using the help of the kiosk operator.The local language IT market is still in a development stage and is expected to grow to around $100 million in the next three to four years. The key drivers for local language computing, say software vendors, are e-governance applications in local language, bundling of multi-lingual software with personal computers and other access devices and emphasis on multi-lingual service offerings by various sectors, including banks and financial services. Raveesh Gupta, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation India, feels developing local language computing is a necessity for vendors if they want to tap the huge Indian market. Technology should understand the language of the local people. The mobile and banking industries have realised this, and are coming out with bilingual service offerings. For instance, ATMs (automated teller machines) are bilingual, making it easy for the common man to operate the machine in his mother tongue, he says.Microsoft realised the need for local language computing eight years ago when it made available its software applications in 38 languages, out of which 12 were Indian. It launched Project Bhasha, aimed at accelerating local language computing in India, in 2003, he says.According to Gupta, in the past, vendors developed their own fonts in local languages. However, the glitch was that a Tamil font developed by vendor A would not talk to a font developed by vendor B. This posed a hurdle to communication, say even e-mail. Today, Microsoft offers local languages based on Unicode, which is based on Government of India standard, and people can communicate with each other in any font, he says.

Microsoft will localise (provide local interfaces) Windows and Office in 14 Indian languages — Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Microsoft collaborates with Governments for joint development and deployment of localised interface for Windows and Office. It has released fully localised Office in Hindi and language interface pack (LIP) in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi and Konkani. "Our aim is to launch language interface packs for all the 14 languages by end 2005," he says.Red Hat India, a joint venture between Red Hat Inc, US, and Clover Technologies, India, and provider of open source solutions, is also aggressively pushing its local language-based Linux software.

It has been in the forefront of bringing the latest open source and Linux Technology to India, and has enabled adoption of open source across segments, including government, enterprise and education, says Javed Tapia, Director, Red Hat India.

"Localisation is key to the success of computerisation in the country, and also the best way to reach people in rural areas," he says. The company's Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 includes productivity applications such as office suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool as well as a Web browser and an e-mail client.

With these applications, users can share digitised text in local languages, across platforms that support Unicode.

The Indian language versions will also feature the Gnome desktop with localised Red Hat tools for system administration, which make tasks like adding printers and connecting to the Internet possible through the local language interface. The installation guide will also be in local languages, he says.According to Tapia, the availability of Linux desktop in Indian languages has the potential to change how education and e-government work. In education, teaching school children will be easier through computer user interfaces in local languages.

In e-Government, the use of local language Linux desktop will enable users to access and/or create information in their own language.

Citizens can access government services in local languages. Localisation also expands the business opportunities of Independent Software Vendors developing applications for education, e-Governance, Rural Banking and Community Information Centres (CICs), he says.

raja@thehindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
An ANSwer to diabetes

Smaller pieces - for many

Good catch

Say it in your own tongue

Go that extra mile for KM

Cartoon