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Gurudutt Kamath
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Thanks
to this column, I was invited to give an introductory talk on technical
writing at a prestigious computer institute. They had asked for
my profile to serve as an introduction. I checked the Net for my
profile. One of the search results was titled “Syllabus”.
I explored that link and found out that an article I had written
on International Commu-nication was included as a part of the syllabus
in a course on that subject at Washington University. Wow! What
an honor, er, honour!
By
the way, I had the privilege of being a Guest Editor for a special
issue of Technical Communication on the subject of international
communication, under the leadership of Nancy Hoft.
Increasingly,
you hear of international editions of software. Similarly, you increasingly
hear about local versions. For example, there are software versions
that cater to the Indian market. You know about Japanese and Arabic
versions of software. “Localisation” is the term given
to changing the software and the related documentation to suit a
particular geographical region. One of the major components of localisation
is of course translation. Needless to add, I am talking about localisation
from an international perspective. Localisation at the national
level would mean having software in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and
so on. Surprisingly, this has not happened in a big way.
I
just checked the Set Language option of Microsoft Word. There are
several Arabic, English, and French versions. I was pleasantly surprised
to see Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, and Sanskrit too! I am not sure
how many are aware, but there are scores of versions of English
used over the world. Microsoft Word provides about 13 of these versions,
English (US) and English (UK) being the most well known. Do you
know which version of English you are using?
Internationalisation
issues
When
I was writing a user manual in India, for a foreign exchange system,
I was not sure which English version I should use—English (US)
or English (UK). The software was going to be installed in the US
and used in the UK and other parts of the world. I checked with
the project manager and he suggested we use English (UK), as the
main foreign exchange centre would be that country.
US
English
Recently,
I saw an advertisement for people knowing US English. Basically,
the ad was trying to recruit fringe people (like foreign students,
tourists, etc), for the purpose of documentation or testing! In
all my 15 years or so of technical writing for exporters, my audience
has mainly been in the US. I must say that in the first ten years
I was not even conscious of US English. Of course, “color”
and “favor”, and other such words hardly came into user
manuals on banking software. The peculiar way in which the Americans
wrote their dates was known to me, but, I suppose, this was more
for correspondence.
Interestingly,
Jennifer Rush, a communications manager in a US company noticed
that my e-mails had an American English touch and she asked me whether
I would like to work for her company in America! I began working
there and learnt a lot from Jenni. In fact, when we were both in
the US, we presented papers in absentia in India, about international
communication and US English. I have given presentations on US English
several times.
Exploring
the Net will give you a lot of information on US English. Similarly,
on the Net you will find tons of material on internationalisation,
localisation, and the various English versions. Machine translation
is another area of interest. When there is a need to translate and
localise, the English that you use needs to be controlled so that
translation becomes easy.
Hinglish
An
increasing trend these days is the use of Hindi words in English
papers. Shobha De, the author and columnist, is said to have started
this trend in the Stardust magazine. While such trivialisation is
all right for communicating trivialities, I think it is not appropriate
for all communications. Newspapers and magazines should avoid such
vulgarisation. Some Hindi and Indian words have become a part of
the English language and it is acceptable to use them. However,
using Hindi and other local terms just for effect not only gives
a stilted effect but also distracts the audience from the message.
Samajh gaye na?
Thanks
to all of you for your encouraging feedback. Every week I get a
couple of letters with favourable comments that encourage me to
keep on writing. As a policy, I do not respond to anyone. However,
rest assured that your feedback is welcome. Many of you may have
noticed that I have answered your concerns or questions here. Hope
this piece has invoked sufficient interest in internationalisation
and localisation.
Gurudutt
Kamath is a technical writer based in Mumbai. Feedback on the column
may be sent to documentor@vsnl.com
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