Hi Jim, This is the reason why I was lukewarm to the idea of an India specific portal in the first place. India's situation is unique, in that there is no common accepted language of communication across the country except for English (among the literate population). For eg. all the BOSUG meets and even the Linux User Group meets happen in English.
So for a country specific portal you'd have to put enough resources to translate the site in all the major local languages. For eg: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malaylam, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujrati, Kashmiri, Oriya etc. Have a front English page with links as Shiv points out. Hindi as a means of spoken communication does cover most of the northern states but leaves out all the southern states in the Lurch. Hindi as a means of written communication has lesser coverage. For eg. my native tongue is Bengali. What about that ? Though most Bengalis can speak Hindi, a much lesser number can read it. I can read it with a little difficulty. Hindi is also not the language of Karnataka which houses India's Silicon Valley. Again tomorrow if you have a translation in Kannada then the Tamilians and Telugus will start asking as well as these are other major Southern languages. Hence I agree with Shiv's views. Regards, Moinak. S h i v wrote: > (Jim/Eric, when it comes to co-ordinating between the projects you two > are the most visible face of opensolaris.org and hence am marking a > copy of this mail to you. Please read through) > > Hi All, > > I was pleasantly surprised to see Jim's blog saying "The India > OpenSolaris Community http://in.opensolaris.org"; > (http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/entry/india_opensolaris_portal_opens). > The announcement should probably go to all the other Indian user > groups (not sure how many are there). Whoever has the bird's view here > should be able to do it. > > I visited the site and I must say that I was quite disappointed. The > entire website is in Hindi a language using which I can manage to > converse, but would find it very difficult to read/write. Going > through the site reminded me of my school days where I barely managed > to clear my hindi exams :-) > And I can safely say that I represent a good majority of Indian > populace. For one, majority of the bosug members might find it not > usable. > > Instead of Hindi if it had been in *Kannada*(official language of > Karnataka state) I would have found it very convenient to browse > through. What does this mean ? > Here is some background for the unitiated : > > India has over 22 "official languages" (as per constitution). There is > no national language status accorded to any single language. > All union government departments communicate in Hindi. The Supreme > court uses English for its proceedings. > All state government departments have their own official language of > communication based on what is predominantly in use in the state. > Hindi is used for written communication predominantly in the country's > capital and a handful of states in and around the capital. > (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_languages_of_India) > > If http://in.opensolaris.org is about creating providing local > language support in OpenSolaris and creating documentation, then the > opening page should be in English and point to additional pages for > the different languages where the people interested can participate. > The link names in the front page can be in English and one another > Indian language as per the link (Chandan's opensolaris odp template > page is a hint). > > If it is about providing an opensolaris.org website to the Indian > population, it has been misguided since this site will be usable by > only a small portion of the population. > > By the way, I did catch a typo in the first word that I read on the page. > ??????????? (OpenSolarsi) should have been > ??????????? (OpenSolaris) > > cheers > Shiv > _______________________________________________ > ug-bosug mailing list > List-Unsubscribe: mailto:ug-bosug-unsubscribe at opensolaris.org > List-Owner: mailto:ug-bosug-owner at opensolaris.org > List-Archives: http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/forum.jspa?forumID=54 >
