Microsoft breaks language barriers in India

BANGALORE, INDIA: As part of its ongoing efforts towards overcoming the language barrier to computing, Microsoft India on Tuesday showcased a host of custom made solutions for the Indian market.

The solutions include Language Interface Packs (LIPs) in 12 Indian languages, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu, for MS Office and Windows, Windows Live, which includes e-mail, Instant Messenger, online storage, photo gallery, social networking, calendar, online storage, personal home page, and more, in seven Indian languages and Captions Language Interface Pack (CLIP) which uses a tool-tip caption to display translations for user interface items in Visual Studio 2008.

The Microsoft India Development Centre also demonstrated an alpha version of a tool that helps the user to enter text in nine Indian languages in any text box on most websites.

The research projects showcased were IL-POST (an annotation framework for Indian languages), wikiBABEL (a community-oriented multilingual content creation portal) and MINT (an algorithm for mining multilingual news corpora).

These projects are aimed at creating resources to enable computational linguistics research in Indian languages, a press release said.

Another highlight of the showcase was a peek at the beta version of Windows 7 in Hindi, one of the eight global languages the Operating System (Beta) that was released recently.

The collection of tools and solutions introduced by Microsoft India today are an attempt to cater to and enable the 95 per cent Indians who still prefer their local language more than English in their work and personal life, the release added.

Commenting on the need for language computing to enable mass IT usage in India, Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India, said, “Each one of us knows of at least a few people who would benefit from ICT if language wasn't a barrier.”

He said the language barrier is an added challenge towards providing access to information to a huge number of Indians – and thereby having them participate in India's growth curve.

“Microsoft, under its global Unlimited Potential effort, aims to deliver computing through accessible, relevant and affordable solutions. Localization issues are a huge factor where accessibility is concerned, and as a global industry leader, we believe Microsoft has a responsibility and the resources to make some difference," he added.

Microsoft has been working on language computing in India since 1998, since the first India visit of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

In 2003, Microsoft India launched Project Bhasha, an effort to bring together governments, the academia and research institutions, the local ISVs and developers and the industry associations on a common ground for promoting local language usage in IT.

The www.bhashaindia.com portal is India's leading community for Indian language computing.