Mind your language ......

Move over world’s back office or business process outsourcing hub, India is fast emerging as a major center for cutting-edge research and development (R&D) projects for global multinationals such as Intel, Microsoft and Motorola as well as Indian firms. More and more companies in industries ranging from IT and telecommunications through pharmaceuticals and biotech are setting up ambitious R&D projects, in part to serve the Indian market, but also with an eye to delivering new generations of products faster to the global market.

Microsoft, which opened its research laboratory in Bangalore in January -- the third outside the U.S., after Cambridge, England, and Beijing -- is another company that views India as a microcosm of the developing world. Considering India's diversity in terms of religion, culture, geography, climate and language, Microsoft believes the country offers opportunities to develop technology that can rapidly be deployed elsewhere. "Solutions that work in India are more likely to transfer to other locations because they will have been tested across these barriers," says a company spokesperson.
Microsoft plans to focus on at least four key areas at its India laboratory. These include multilingual systems, in which researchers will work on areas such as speech recognition and user interfaces in several languages; India, with its 22 languages, is considered a good location for such research. Other areas include the development of technologies for emerging markets; geographical information systems; and sensors and sensor network applications.
Now, here is a twist as this blog is not supposed to be another report on India’s economic trend or fact sheet of the Research and Development work that are at present happening in India. McKinsey and Forrester are doing that task very well. This blog is meant to be Funny. As Microsoft is spending a fortune in order to come out with much localized version of it’s most popular software namely Windows operating system and MS Office for larger user acceptance and penetration in this hugely Hindi speaking emerging market (read: ubharta bazaar).

And as I, like many contemporary thinkers, leaving all mundane office duties was getting into deep thought about how these softwares will look with Hindi commands, one of my colleague from UP came to my rescue. When I told him what I was thinking….he smiled and said “ ee kaunsi badi baat hai…..humko bataiye kaunsa command ka hindi janna hai aapko?”
To try, I asked him a couple of typical MS commands and to my utter astonishment he came up with instant answers. He told me that there has been many “e-mail phorwarding” with this same issue, therefore it is nothing new. I am sure one of the driving factor for many R&D work in India is that we are such thinkers, hell no, not just thinkers but such self motivating advanced thinkers.

Here are the list of commands and their (apt) hindi version….[listing down for Microsoft to notice, and save a lot of their valuable time and resource in Hindi linguistic research]


• Phaail = File
• Bachao = Save
• Aise Bachao = Save as
• Subko Bachao = Save All
• Mujhe Bachao = Help
• Dhoondo = Find
• Firse Dhoondo = Find Again
• Hilao = Move (My favorite :D)
• Dak =Mail
• Dakiya = Mailer
• Paas se dhekho = Zoom
• Door se dhekho = Zoom Out
• Kholo = Open
• Bandh Karo = Close
• Naya = New
• Purana/Khatara = Old
• Badli Karo = Replace
• Bhaago = Run ;

Now was the time for the ultimate shocker. I asked my colleague deceitfully, what he thinks the name of Microsoft softwares will be in Hindi. He told me that issue has already been solved. He showed me a forwarded mail from one of his friend which had the hindi translation of major MS Software names.

Worth mentioning are:

POWERPOINT - "AtiSukshma Mulayam ShaktiBindu"
WORD 6 - "AtiSukshma Mulayam Shabda Cheh"
ACCESS - "AtiSukshma Mulayam PRAVESH KI SAMMATI"
VISUAL C++ - "AtiSukshma Mulayam Nazaaraa C adhik hi adhik"
OFFICE 2000 - "Karyalaya 2000 mein"

Now dumbstruck!!! I asked him what “AtiSukshma Mulayam” means. He replied with a blissful smile: “when you are translating the products in Hindi, why leave the company?”

“Whaaaaaaaaaat?” Microsoft = AtiSukshma Mulayam

Bill save your butt.