Hindi Version of this Blog

Who woulda thunk that! This blog is now being mirrored in Hindi. It’s author is Alok Kumar and is called “Bharat ka Vikas — Atanu Dey“.

My Hindi is nothing to write home about. But even I can tell that Alok’s translations of the posts are excellent. I realize that my writing style is not the simplest as I favor the convoluted sentence too frequently. Yet Alok gets the ideas across. Thank you very much, Alok Kumar. Your work is much appreciated.

I asked him why he is taking the trouble. He said that he was doing his bit to add to the Hindi content on the web. The more Hindi content on the web –> more Hindi readers on the web –> more Hindi content on the web –> . . . and so on.

So dear readers, please spread the word about Alok’s translation of this blog.

June 21, 2008 - Posted by Atanu | Blogging, Public Service Announcement

7 Comments

Since many of you have asked how it’s done – the technology part – here’s a link to a technical howto for creating Indian language content, it’s pretty trivial if the tools of 2008 are used.

Comment by lurker | June 21, 2008
hm, lurker#1 was Alok.

Comment by lurker | June 21, 2008
I may have to rethink this “lurker” login.

For one thing, it creates confusion when people just post a comment as “lurker” without indicating which lurker they are.

Second, allowing anonymous comments makes it hard to know whether to take a comment seriously or not.

In the present instance, both the previous comments by “lurker” appears to have been made by the same commenter. ~~And neither of the comments were made by Alok.~~ I am not sure if they were made by Alok.

Comment by Atanu Dey | June 21, 2008
Lurker #1 and #2 were both me. Sorry I should have identified myself at least the second time. Here’s an interesting video in Hindi on how to type in Hindi, it explains the concepts used in designing the inscript keyboard layout, not the actual typing. That’s in part 2 of this video which I haven’t been able to locate yet.

Comment by Alok | June 21, 2008
Alok, are you sure that the link you gave has anything to do with how to type in Hindi?

First four minutes of the 7 minute video shows a woman going on about how small children learn the Hindi alphabet. She is not very good as a teacher and I am also not impressed with her grasp on Hindi. If she has to use the English word such as “quickly”, “use”, “position”, “convenient”, “develop”, “expertise”, “practice”, and “research”, she should not be in the teaching Hindi business.

Anyway, I wasted the time listening to her rather inane talk and came away none the wiser on how to type Hindi characters using the standard keyboard.

I think that merely having the technology is not enough. One has to use it well. Having digital recorders and Youtube is not enough. What to teach and how to teach is equally important, if not more so.

This video is a shining example of how not to teach. First of all, in any segment, one should declare up front what one is going to do.

“In this segment, we will talk randomly about Indian language scripts, make a few wrong statements, and ramble on about typing in Hindi. We will not be telling you anything on how you can type Hindi characters using your standard qwerty keyboard.”

A statement of objective like that saves everybody time.

Comment by Atanu Dey | June 21, 2008
Here is a link to a real inscript tutor but I haven’t tried it myself since it works only on a windows machine and I don’t have one with me right now.

Have written to the author of the video to ask for the remaining portion, it abruptly ends at 7:10 while a lot still remains to be said. I am sure she would also benefit from the feedback you gave above.

Comment by Alok | June 21, 2008
I don’t read Hindi content, or even Telugu (my native language) content on the web, but this effort is most praise worthy.
More content in the several Indian languages makes the web more accessible to many in India and I believe that benefits everybody.

Comment by dp.chalasani | June 22, 2008