Hindi
Thursday, May 1, 2003
Something that has been growing on me lately :
Guess which is the third most widely spoken language in the world ?
“Hindustani” which is an aggregation of all the varieties of Hindi.
It worries me to find that several things are available in a plethora of languages, except Hindi. The following examples are enough to make the point clear….
1. Linux - The Operating system and the documentation support almost all the European languages, and even languages like Thai! The Language Support page at Linux Now is a list of language specific “howto”s. I hae run across lists of supported languages when using several linux applications, and also other software such as the Apache Web Server.
Surprisingly enough the Unicode Character Standard supports Devanagari which is the script Hindi uses.
2. Several songs (shall we overlook “We shall overcome” by Pete Seger(?) for the moment), such as “The Internationale” have no Hindi versions.
There are more examples out there of Hindi being generally overlooked in the process of translating works and documentation, and of adapting software products for global use.
What all this makes me think is that what were(are) all the Hindi-speakers doing? Dont tell me there are not enough Indian software engineers, for one! I would certainly like to help translating documentation into Hindi, but unfortunately its not my mother tongue and my vocabulary is not that good.
I used to be skeptical (and even have laughed many a time) at the Indian minister for Science and Technology,Dr. M.M.Joshi’s, attempt to translate everything into Hindi, since it is our National Language. The current issue, I think, is one of usability. A lot people in the Hindi heartland complete their education in Hindi, for them being able to use a computer with just as many resources as a German, for example, would be a significant acheivement.
The point is, when efforts are made to make a product/document multilingual, can one just overlook the third most widely spoken language in the world, or for that matter , the seventh most widely spoken language (Bengali) ?
Filed by Carthik at 11:47 pm under Livejournal