Recent & Upcoming Industry Trends in Language Technology
The recent news of Facebook’s AI creating its own language and making the chatbots ‘communicate without human input’ did more than creeping people out. It pictured two seemingly unrelated contexts onto the same frame; human languages and technology.While OK Google and Siri have been around responding to commands in a few languages, the other side of the globe where languages change with each cardinal direction; technology and languages are trying to get hold of each other. Having said that, let us now focus on India; a land of 1.3 billion people, 22 official Indian languages and with 0.01 percent Indic content on the internet. The e-Commerce boom in the year 2015, the flocking of Chinese smartphones, and the country going mobile first, India surely is growing technologically with more connected devices.
The Google KPMG report titled ‘Indian Languages – Defining India’s Internet’ released in April 2017 is yet another attempt to highlight the growth of Indian internet and with it the growth of Indian languages on digital media. So, how exactly does the picture of ‘Digital India’ look like? Which technical barriers need to be addressed for a smooth user experience? How will the websites and mobile applications cater to 90 percent non-English speaking Indian population who will on board internet for the first time? Is localization enough? Will the website addresses be available in Indian languages too? How about email communication? How about enabling people to educate, access and type in their mother tongue or in the language of their choice before they can even think of using any of these technologies?
The answers lie in the individual puzzle pieces that are being built with their own technical challenges but for the Indian internet to come together. Where initiatives like Bharat.in is internationalizing domain names in 15 Indian languages, Data mail is providing email addresses for eight. The need for language based community was
identified a long time back by Mooshak, a micro-blogging platform for Hindi users. For mass communication, Daily hunt; the largest collection of regional news, books and magazines is catering to the Indian population in 14 Indian languages.
So does it help an end user when a website or mobile application is localized? Yes. Does the Indic language technology stop here? No. A website or application, localized with regional content also calls for all the services which are widely available for English language. Any ecommerce website for example, has millions of products available to its end users but they are also quick with their search query and sorting of products. If the same website were localized in regional languages, it would also require searching and sorting across those languages. But such technologies haven’t seen the dawn of utilization as widely as of English.
Mobile usage is also growing at a rapid pace worldwide. By the end of 2017, it is estimated that in India alone there will be 300 million smartphone users and this numbers will rise to 400 million by 2020. So, how does the scenario change when the user is accessing these services on mobile devices?
Fonts and rendering engine are the basic building block for language support on any device. Let’s have a look at Android based devices; the popular choice among smartphone users worldwide. While most of the Android devices come pre-loaded with language support, the option for language and input change is buried deep inside phone settings. As such devices, although loaded with language technology fail to capture the awareness of the user. How would a native speaker find its way in an environment where the operating system itself comes in a default language he/she doesn’t understand?
Apart from the availability of websites, applications and services, digital presence of language depends largely on the content production by masses who communicate in their mother tongue. Groups and communities formed on the basis of languages share messages, blog or opine over variety of platforms which if public are also searchable and sortable.
Technologies are built when gaps are identified. The absence of majority of Indian languages on technology space led to the basic building blocks of fonts and rendering across devices; mobile phones, set-top boxes, printers etc. The software in the form of input and editor also came into picture. However, the whole legacy system on language technologies needs update. It needs standardizations. The design needs to be fool-proof to guarantee zero errors when millions of Indians are accessing the internet in their own language and billions of cross language computations are happening at the back. The language technologies are an addition to aid the Indian language user on a connected device but it needs various pieces to come together to ensure that it works right and robust.
The language technologies are an addition to aid the Indian language user on a connected device, but it needs various pieces to come together to ensure that it works right and robust
So does it help an end user when a website or mobile application is localized? Yes. Does the Indic language technology stop here? No. A website or application, localized with regional content also calls for all the services which are widely available for English language. Any ecommerce website for example, has millions of products available to its end users but they are also quick with their search query and sorting of products. If the same website were localized in regional languages, it would also require searching and sorting across those languages. But such technologies haven’t seen the dawn of utilization as widely as of English.
Mobile usage is also growing at a rapid pace worldwide. By the end of 2017, it is estimated that in India alone there will be 300 million smartphone users and this numbers will rise to 400 million by 2020. So, how does the scenario change when the user is accessing these services on mobile devices?
Fonts and rendering engine are the basic building block for language support on any device. Let’s have a look at Android based devices; the popular choice among smartphone users worldwide. While most of the Android devices come pre-loaded with language support, the option for language and input change is buried deep inside phone settings. As such devices, although loaded with language technology fail to capture the awareness of the user. How would a native speaker find its way in an environment where the operating system itself comes in a default language he/she doesn’t understand?
Apart from the availability of websites, applications and services, digital presence of language depends largely on the content production by masses who communicate in their mother tongue. Groups and communities formed on the basis of languages share messages, blog or opine over variety of platforms which if public are also searchable and sortable.
Technologies are built when gaps are identified. The absence of majority of Indian languages on technology space led to the basic building blocks of fonts and rendering across devices; mobile phones, set-top boxes, printers etc. The software in the form of input and editor also came into picture. However, the whole legacy system on language technologies needs update. It needs standardizations. The design needs to be fool-proof to guarantee zero errors when millions of Indians are accessing the internet in their own language and billions of cross language computations are happening at the back. The language technologies are an addition to aid the Indian language user on a connected device but it needs various pieces to come together to ensure that it works right and robust.
