Local languages on the web

Are Hindi and Urdu worth targetting?

[lammert]

I am currently working on a website about a cultural theme which is targeting people which are not really web savvy. The site is mainly targeting non-English speaking language groups in specific areas of the world and manual translations are ongoing now for a number of local languages.

An interesting target would be the people in Pakistan and India, both because of the specific cultural content of the site and because of the potential size of the user base. Translating to Hindi and Urdu languages might be a possibility, but I do not know how much these languages are used in these two countries for websites. In both countries English is also heavily used, but this site will specifically target people outside of the large cities.

Can people from the Pakistan/India region shed any light on the web-language situation of both Hindi and Urdu, or would providing an English language version be good enough to use throughout these two countries?

[JS_Harris]

Your statistics probably already shine some light on the issue for you lammert. Check your google analytics and see how many pages are loaded via Google's translation service. If you're seeing a significant number of pages being opened through a translator you might want to consider making your site available in that language.

Remember, just making a site multi-language friendly doesn't mean it will be opened in the proper language. If someone is used to browsing the net through a translation service they might not take advantage of your onsite language translation.

[lammert]

It is a new site which is totally different from the sites I operate currently. Therefore I cannot apply statistics I have from the past from other sites. Furthermore translation services don't work on this site because of the technical setup. Translation services don't translate PDF files for example which are an important part of this site. Those people using an on-line translation service are web savvy enough to be not the group I want to target anyway.

All my sites are multi-lingual ranging from 2 to 9 languages and I have 10+ years experience on running multi-lingual sites. No need to teach me on the problems and possibilities of those setups.

[badbadmonkey]

I would say run it in English for a while and study stats. Appearances of translation proxies (some of which do read PDFs) + setting of the client language code. Time-on-page stats for those areas compared to others. You can make a good guess as to the demand.

It's obviously ideal to provide the languages. Your question is really "is it worth it". This can only be answered by a consideration of the number of visits in the relevant regions and the above, and the associated benefit against the cost.

[Leosghost]

Not based in either place lammert ..but maybe this might be of some use to you ..
I dont know about the Indian "market" in enough detail to be of any help ..
But as far as Pakistan goes ..I do deal with a number of companies in Pakistan ..Karachi and also in the Gujrat area ( which is not exactly "metropolitan" ) which is on the Pakistani side of the border with India ..the Indian side is Jammu and Kashmir ) north of Lahore ..

It's going to be very very dependant upon your target groups and your material ..

Most of the people I deal with in Karachi read and write English very well ..( but only a very few of them understand anything technical about websites , HTML for example ) ..and in most cases their spoken English is very good ,( frequently grammatically much better than that of the UK English who bemoan the accents of call centres in India :) ..

In the Gujrat area ..again ..no problems with my contacts reading and writing English ..but many do not speak English very well although they understand perfectly well English when it is spoken to them as long as it isn't too technical and is spoken clearly ..

However when we get off the phone they frequently email me apologising for their poor spoken English ( they should listen to some of the "native" brits interviewed on UK radio ! if they want to hear poor spoken English ) ..their emails are very clear and precise :)

Levels of English comprehension etc that I'm aware of in Lahore are about the same as Karachi ..and everyone tells me that Islamabad is full of educated people like lawyers and politicians who I'm told .."are all too smart for their own or anyone elses good" ..

Bear in mind that there is very large scale illiteracy in the countryside ..even in Urdu ..many people speak primarily their own dialects and only read a few words of what you could call standard Urdu ..

And in contrast many of the more affluent in the cities have levels of education that are equivalent or better than the best in the western world ..

HTH :)..if only a little

[lammert]

It helps, although I am not sure yet in which direction :)

My target are those outside of the large cities. The site subject is related to their culture. For some it might even be their first encounter with the web. I don't expect these people to use translators. If they use they web they will probably only surf in languages they know.

I think I will first release the site in a number of other languages. If it establishes a significant userbase in those languages, I can always add Urdu and Hindi later.

[anand84]

Hi Lammert

Since I do not know much about your business, I am just guessing that you are targeting people who are new to the web AND have already gotten here (i.e. you are not trying to get the internet-illiterates to the web in which case sky's the limit, considering the population in this part of the world)

However, from what I can say, there is a market for vernacular website. A lot of people do read the vernacular newspaper and gossip stuff on the web. However, from what I have observed, these are mostly people who happen to have access to the internet. Eg: Guys managing Internet cafes, the office-boy in my ex-company who used our office computers to read the Telugu newspaper,etc.

But these are instances I can pick from the cities. If you are targeting the non-urban dwellers, I am kind of pessimistic about the numbers you can reach since the internet is not on-the-face of these people and hence you can't expect people like the office boy I mentioned earlier in the smaller cities.