Language localisation has become increasingly important for enterprises as they gradually move away from almost saturated urban markets to semi-urban and rural areas. By Durba Ghosh
It is said, communication is a great ice breaker, and IT software makers have taken a note of that. As enterprises train their eyes on talent and resources in tier 1 and tier 2 cities to expand, local language is the first step they adopt to reach out. Gauging the demand, industry players including Microsoft Corp., SAP AG and HP Labs are aggressively tapping the market and developing enterprise applications. The government’s plans to digitize and localize internal as well as external communication has given further push to computing in local language.
A computing device enabling usage in a language chosen by users is called Localization. Even when hardware cannot be customized, software can be modified to support localization needs.
While Government is the largest consumer of localized computing, companies say there is demand from private enterprises also, especially the ones in the small-and-medium segment or in labor intensive sectors.
Microsoft’s Project Bhasha was the first such initiative in this space, where its flagship products – Windows and Office, were localized in Hindi and Tamil. The application is compatible with 14 Indian languages today.
“We have plans to add more languages. There is a lot of opportunity in this space. Government for one consumes a lot of content in the local languages. Almost all government operations happen in local language,” Meghashyam Karanam, Lead Product Marketing Manager – Project, Vision and Localization, Microsoft said. Microsoft works with the Government and independent software vendors to periodically develop and upgrade its service under its local language program.
Microsoft also offers virtual keyboards that can be downloaded in several Indian languages from its portal – bhashaindia.com. The software maker has over 55,000 registered users over the portal.
HP Labs, the R&D arm of HP is also developing software capabilities for enterprises in local languages. The company already has a product – Lipi Toolkit, which is an offshoot of its work in handwriting recognition. The open source Lipi Toolkit is a collection of tools and algorithms for building handwriting recognition engines and text input solution for Indic languages.
Focus Sectors
Small Scale businesses account for nearly 40% of the total output in the manufacturing sector and about 95% of industrial units in the country. These small scale businesses are powered by an employee base that broadly communicates in local language, but have scarce IT infrastructure presence. Local language IT has the potential to tap these industries and offer effective enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions on the ground-level. The industry players reckon that applications in local language for accounting and ERP systems will be the leading applications that will drive the demand in the SME segment in India.
The media and publishing sector is another lucrative sector for ERP solutions in local language, since the industry is aggressive in tapping 60% of the country’s population that still communicates in local languages. With the demand in vernacular publishing expected to grow, local language IT products will increase the opportunities to provide end-to-end solutions to publishers in the form of desktop publishing and local language computing hardware. Banking institutions are also adopting local language computing to target rural and semi-urban economies.
SAP, which started its ERP in Hindi by deploying local language IT as a part of state and central e-governance implementations, has now started to localize for its enterprise customers also.
SAP’s ERP solution addresses areas such as logistics, payroll and employee self services. The localized solution helps companies unlock the huge domain knowledge and expertise that exists at different employee and management levels.
The ERP application, developed by SAP Labs India, along with agencies including The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) and language experts, has covered over 4.5 million coding lines till now.
SAP AG also announced its File Lifecycle Management solution – in Hindi and English – recently to improve the file management processes for Indian public sectors.
The company said it will focus on sectors like education, academia and public healthcare where it sees deep demand for local language computing. It is also targeting the mobility programs of enterprises, where employees can be mobilized in their local language. Cloud computing is another lucrative area the company plans to tap.
Hits and misses
Even though local language computing and ERP systems have found their way in the corporate world, its adoption is still slow paced, perhaps because of absence of a standardized keyboard.
“There is not much digitized content also in local language. In enterprises it has not caught up that well as yet. But, local language computing consumption is only going to grow, as more and more businesses move online. Companies in tier 2 and tier 3 cities have huge potential. We are creating awareness there,” Mr Karanam said.
However, adoption of unicode has largely helped in localizing computing as it recognizes fonts of any format irrespective of platforms and operating systems. Unicode is the globally accepted encoding system to use local languages in computers.
Applications like the ones offered by Microsoft, where a convertor changes non-unicode input on a computer to unicode output on screen has also helped increased adoption of local language computing.
“An application that can be downloaded is much more convenient and cost effective than installing hardware. We have seen a lot of traction for our convertor application,” Karanam said. The company has also created a platform to push development of applications in vernacular languages and localized content.
SAP on the other hand offers upgrade application to the OEMs to embed it in a regular desktop or laptop, which can then be activated by the user for a particular language. The company also plans to develop solutions to offer video based IT access in local languages for the enterprises.
The way ahead
Localization as a concept may have taken birth to aid last-mile connectivity, but it is fast clutching roots in the corporate world. Applications are being exclusively developed for enterprises and some customized too according to requirements. Even though, government – central and state – are currently the largest consumers of enterprise solutions in local languages, corporates have also started to recognize its reach and are deploying at niche or generic levels. Especially, the small scale businesses or regional companies are adopting ERP in their own language. Large corporates too are deploying it at certain levels. While, local language computing is not yet completely by hardware, it is not a threat to its growth, it in actuality bodes well for the space. Since software is faster and cheaper to install than hardware, a software based localized application is expected to find more takers.