GNOME In Hindi

whacker9 writes "IndLinux.org has released GNOME interface in Hindi which is the most commonly spoken language in India. The interface is called "Milan" which is Hindi for "union". Check out the press release on New Indian Express, the release page and some screenshots (for those who understand the lingo).."

Comments

Re:Kind of unimpressive

[The Cydonian]

Inevitable, in fact, IMHO, necessary.

The reason I believe is this:- unlike other language users, Hindi speakers like me are essentially bi-lingual (penta-lingual in my case). Which is to say, even if we type/speak in Hindi, we're used to a more English version of things. I mean, really, how would you translate "OK" to Hindi? Theek hai? For a natural language speaker who's used to an English interface, nothing could sound more funny. Which is also the reason why many of Devnagari commands on the menus are direct transliterations of actual English commands. The translation, as opposed to transliteration, is actually less than it seems.

The problems don't stop there of course. Like most Americans and most other Indian programmers, I'm used to the 101 US keyboard with ASCII layout. I have five Indian language (Telugu) word processors on my system, but rarely use the regular keyboard interface that comes along. Reason:- it easier to type with an ASCII layout keyboard than the ISCII one. More used to it.

Professional DTP folks back in India also apparently have a similar problem; most seem to prefer SreeLipi, which uses the traditional typewriter layout for keyboards, instead of iLeap, which uses the ISCII layout. This, I think, is IndLinux's biggest drawback. How many would like to change their typing habits, especially in languages with complex glyphs?

And finally, despite all appearances, this is not the first Indian language layout for Linux. Tamil Linux, apparently, got there first.