Re: Re: Hindi and Software

["Ruchir Tewari" <ruchir_tewari@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

what's the problem in translating to a handful of indian languages
when it has already been translated to more than 50 ?
besides to me chinese appears more complicated than all the indian
languages put together :-)  the reduced version (big-5) of chinese has 13060 
characters, whereas each indian language was only about 50 (will all 
permutations of vowels and consonants about 250, so with 16 main indian 
languages, only 4000 characters, which is less than a third of chinese ). 
and actual chinese has 171,882,493 characters !

so you see the problem is in the mind, not in actual execution.
with a handful of dedicated people, successful localisation can
be done for all indian languages, including your favourite kannada/marathi.

fonts for all the languages have already been developed by GIST,
making the problem easier -
http://preview.cdacindia.com/html/gist/source/down/down.htm
you can type MS Word documents in hindi/kannada/urdu if you like.
I had fun doing this in hindi and I recommend you download the fonts and try 
it out yourself.

also there should be automatic translators available between
Indian languages - on the lines of http://world.altavista.com
which can do conversions betwen english and chinese and other
languages. try it out ! the display should be available in the
font of the appropriate language. in fact this project should be
treated with some urgency.

the overriding benefit will be computer access to say 90% of indian
population in the next 10 years, vs. just 15-20 % in the same time
without localization.

cheers, - ruchir




> Ruchir Tewari saw fit to inform me that:
> >the biggest example of this is china - in china internet connectivity
> >started 4-5 years after it did in india. however right now the chinese
> >internet user base is already 5 times larger than in india. i think
> >this is large part due to localisation - my chinese friends always browse
> >the web in chinese instead of in english. the linux-chinese howto
> >has been around for quite a while and people are fluent in using chinese
> >from the regular keyboards.
>
> But in china, chinese is the only language I suppose. Here in India a 
> fellow
> from south will say he wants kannada / malyalam / telugu / tamil.
> A fellow from east will say i want all this stuff in assamese etc.
> From north there will be demand for localization in Punjabi, etc.
>
> If we try to localize in Hindi than still there are many people who are
> not comfortable with hindi or they don't know hindi.
>
> Take my case. I have learnt my 1-10 th std. in Marathi Medium in Karnataka.
> There I had no Hindi Subject, Only English / Kannada / Marathi were the 
> only
> three main language subjects. I have never learnt hindi, though I can speak 
> and read
> hindi because of my Marathi knowledge. :-)
>
> See where the problem lies for localization in India :-)
>
> My 2 cents.
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Rajesh Fowkar                            rfowkar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Kurtarkar Nagari,Bldg-C,T4,              
> http://rajesh.computers.webjump.com
> Santacruz,Ponda-Goa-403401-INDIA         Powered By : Debian GNU/Linux 
> (Potato)
> 						      Kernel 2.4.1
> "The expert at anything was once a beginner."  -Hayes
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> An alpha version of a web based tool to manage
> your subscription with this mailing list is at
> http://lists.linux-india.org/cgi-bin/mj_wwwusr

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com