Forum Moderators: open
Back in January we had a thread about AltaVista to set up Hindi engine [webmasterworld.com]. I haven't heard much about that since all the acquisitions. Did that get dropped?
The Hindi translation for "I'm Feeling Lucky" is pretty close at "Today my kismet (luck) is good", [even though they didn't use the sterile Hindi word "bhagya" for luck, opting for the more popular Arabic/Urdu one] but the Marathi one stumps me - something like "Lines of Enjoyment/Experience". The word "Page" as in "Pages from India" and "Make Google Your Homepage" are called publications and page in one language and in reverse order in the other.
Most of the row of links "Advertise with us" etc is reduced to a single one "All about Google", which then leads to the English page anyway. :)
Actually, I can surmise that the mix of English and Marathi arises from the search pages being dynamically built from several sources and some of them can't handle the foreign character set.
Not having a Marathi keyboard, I just copied the words off the page "Marathi" and "Tamil" and did a search - got two whole results, one being a Google page for language tools and the other a genuine result from a Tripod site. Even the snippet is pretty good. The Google spelling for Tamil has a short "a" sound, whereas the popular spelling is "Taamil". The result uses both spellings and the shorter one is emboldened.
Searching for the word "ingraji" (English) also brings up the same two pages. Looks like someone needs to write more pages in those languages PBQ...
Nothing came up in Images or Directory. Groups brought up one hit from soc.culture.indian.marathi. The translation of the interface is good (and amusing to see the literal translation of "thread" and "message" :), but again the same mix of English and Marathi text.
- Ash
You can volunteer to translate Google's help information and search interface into your favorite language. By helping with our translation process you ensure that Google will be available in your language of choice more quickly and with a better interface than it would have otherwise. There is no minimum commitment. You can translate a phrase, a page or our entire site. Once we have enough of the site translated, we will make it available in the language you are requesting.source: Google in Your Language (BETA) [services.google.com]
Translation status:
I recall that when AV was contemplating a Hindi engine some people were saying that there was not enough content to justify it (or at least it seemed that way to me). Now that Google has the ability to index these languages is there a good selection of content out there? Are there other local SEs for these language groups that are going to be hurt by this?
English has always been a compulsory language for those Indians whose school language (called "medium") is not English. Hence I was puzzled by the decision to offer those interfaces. Could be more of a business/political move (G is probably about to open an R&D centre there?) than one driven by business/revenue.
They picked the top five languages spoken in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (Tamil overlap with India). I'd be interested to hear from someone presently in India whether an Indian interface makes any sense.
- Ash
I wasn't sure what to think having only seen the anemic press releases noted by GG.
Those Press releases were horrible but perhaps the only couple which were released on the Net in India.
It would be interesting to hear what sort of index sizes they have for each language group.
Except regional newspapers and some cultural websites I am not aware of many Indian Language sites. In mainstream sites rediff's name comes to mind but that also is for News Section.
Hence I was puzzled by the decision to offer those interfaces.
Yeah me too. But then by the amount of Indians working for Google thought this was someone's pet project in google.
Now that Google has the ability to index these languages is there a good selection of content out there?
I would be surprised if there is presently large content available. It's not a better business practice for an Indian website to invest in regional languages bcoz there are more than 13 national languages and god knows how many languages if you count sub languages and localized pronounciations. It is a luxury very few sites can afford.
Are there other local SEs for these language groups that are going to be hurt by this?
No local SEs. Only Google. Add to that Yahoo! directory. And maybe search provided by times group and rediff. But that is miniscule compared to Google. Have talked to many average surfers and it is the undisputed king. Also the only SE which gets Coverage in Print Media.
Might this not be a good impetus then to make some content pages for your clients in these languages? You could almost guarantee top placement for their keywords
They would seriously doubt my intelligience if I ask them to make a site in regional language. It simply does not make sense for an ecommerce site in India to cater to Regional language. There are few exceptions. :)
I don't know if there are any Indian language keyboards (physical ones) or operating systems.
Indian language software and keyboards:
[geocities.com...]
has a list, for unix, windows and mac ( as much as I could gather)
About the demand for indian language search engines: Indian langauge tv shows have higher ratings, Indian language movies have higher viewerships, than non indian ones in India. So why should the web be any different, as hardware prices go down and tech becomes more user friendly? Indian language websites are the next logical step.
