Microsoft showcases a range of its products to popularize Hindi Language Computing
At an event in Jaipur, Microsoft showcased the integration of Hindi on Office 365, Sway, Skype IM translator, Bing and Windows Phone that is available at no extra cost for consumers. The products and services portfolio showcased today has made Hindi Language computing more intuitive and discoverable for users, enabling them to be more productive.
In this information-driven world, for millions of people, linguistic divide continues to be a barrier for the effective use of technology. India being one of the world’s largest digital economies has a high level of linguistic diversity with 22 major languages, written in 13 different scripts, with over 720 dialects.
The proliferation of the affordable devices and increasing mobile internet penetration is opening up newer opportunities to support local languages through technology, especially for those who still remain untouched by the digital revolution.
The number of local- language Internet users in India is growing at 47% year-on-year and has touched 127 million in June 20151. The numbers clearly highlight an opportunity for both, the Central and Rajasthan Governments that are on a mission of digital inclusion.
Alok Lall - Director, Office Marketing said, “In our commitment to empower users to achieve more, we are delighted to announce a suite of Hindi compatible products and services that users can use at no extra cost. We continue to enhance capabilities, making it easy for users across geographies to use our products and services without facing the language barrier.”
He further added, “We have been a partner to India’s developing technology landscape for the last 25 years and continue to invest in the same. With Project Bhasha, we are accelerating Hindi language computing in India wherein, Microsoft is primarily focusing its efforts in three key areas: Product localization, Government collaboration, Academia & Developer Integration through a common platform bhashaindia. We further fortified these efforts by launching cloud services from India data centers, making Hindi language computing on the local cloud a reality.”
