Heading towards a Vernacular Internet
India’s linguistic and cultural diversity may be best represented by the multitude of languages and dialects spoken across the nation. Unlike most countries that are unified by one single language, India is, in fact, a nation of 22 official languages and at least 1600 spoken dialects. This emerging market, known to be the fifth largest economy in the world, will have a staggering 829 million internet users by 2021 according to a Google-KPMG report. The report further goes on to add that a compelling 75% of these users will prefer to access the Internet in their mother tongue!
As more and more Indians come online, businesses are gradually waking up to the importance of connecting with their target audiences in their language so as to transform the way their products and services are sold. Furthermore, consumer behaviour has changed drastically and remarkably in the last 5 years owing to the ubiquity and affordable prices of mobile phones along with internet penetration, leading to higher internet adoption levels in the country. This has meant that an increasing number of Indians now want to consume content in their mother tongues.
Why the buyer won’t buy
As the world moves online, businesses from all major sectors are increasingly identifying the need to go digital, but not every business recognises the need to go vernacular. A shocking number of web and mobile applications are still talking to vernacular India in English. Considering how barely 10% of our population speaks English, this is clearly a lost opportunity for many because if the buyer can’t read, the buyer won’t buy, as pointed out in a research carried out by Common Sense Advisory, a leading research and analytics company.
Even on a sentiment level, trust is the key in an online marketplace, where a reassuring personal touch is often missing. Being able to read about the product or service that you are buying in your language, helps make up for the lack of the in-person experience that Indians are so used to. Trust is also the keyword when it comes to making online payments. Buyers are reluctant to part with credit card information when they are being spoken to in a language that is not their own.
Industry challenges
It is evident that businesses want to localise and sell to audiences beyond their primary markets. They might have the vision that underlines the need to localise content, but unfortunately, the language and language technology ecosystem does not exactly help their cause.
While cost and time have always been the primary determining factors for services in our industry, if the RoI isn’t immediately or effectively visible, it will naturally lead to a lower impetus to localise. In addition to this, the lack of a large pool of resources and the lack of large, professionally managed language service providers, coupled with the inability to integrate technology in vernacular localisation workflows, often result in an increased time to market, thereby resulting in a low impetus to localise. Another factor would be the lack of qualified and quality resources on the freelancer market, which ultimately places the responsibility of doing the QA on the buyer. Would such an investment in localisation really be worth it for a buyer?
Behind the scenes
All is surely not lost. A lot of work is happening in the background, be it with MTPE, AI, voice & speech technology, domain names in Indian languages or even promoting the concept of ‘digital inclusion’. A significant amount of work is being done to ensure all information and communication reaches the next half billion users in their mother tongues. There is an increasing number of networking associations, language communities, automated platforms, crowdsourced translation models, and language marketplaces that are working to solve these problems.
On a micro level, language service providers would do well to adapt to the needs of the market and work towards making use of available technology, and spending time and money on training and upskilling their in-house or contracted human resources, in view of the changing nature of work. On a macro level, the Government of India, along with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Technology Development in Indian Languages (TDIL), in association with FICCI-ILIA, have made a significant contribution to this space and are working with multiple stakeholders across the academia, government, public and private sectors to make the internet relevant to every Indian, while facilitating innovation, networking & policy advocacy.
