__p Microsoft Corporation India has announced the launch of an extensive program aimed at accelerating local language computing in India, dubbed Project Bhasha.
p____p Under this project, Microsoft will focus on product localization, government collaboration, academia/developer integration and building a local language IT ecosystem through community/industry participation.
p____p Rajiv Kaul, managing director, Microsoft Corporation India, said, “We view Project Bhasha as a collaborative program for bringing together the governments, the academia and research institutions, the vendors and the industry associations on a common ground for backing local language computing. We are confident that, particularly in a country like India, localization will drive the next wave of computing by enabling access to technology for a broader section of society and thereby helping eliminate the current digital divide.”
p____p Craig Mundie, chief technology officer, Microsoft Corporation, said, “Microsoft has been a forerunner in the localization revolution. Worldwide our flagship products offer support for 38 languages. We have focused R&D teams working round the clock to create new benchmarks on the product localization front.�
p____p As a first step in its localization efforts, Microsoft will roll out interfaces for its flagship products Windows and Office in 14 Indian languages namely, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarat, Gurumukhi, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
p____p Microsoft will work with the Central government for adoption of Unicode as a common development standard for local language application development. It will also engage with state governments for joint development and validation of the local language interface packs, setting up of local language labs and creation of state information portals.
p____p Microsoft will set up five state-of-the-art centers equipped with local language computing tools, besides investing in a dedicated training effort by conducting workshops on Unicode and local language application development for developers and the ISV (independent software vendors) community.
p____p Additionally, to encourage localized application development, Microsoft will sponsor select applications that will be ported on Unicode. It will also soon launch an online community portal.