Multilingualism is championing innovation in online expression and redefining boundaries through technology.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
This inspiring quote by the revolutionary Nelson Mandela holds tremendous significance in an era when society gradually acknowledges the critical role that mother languages play in empowering and educating people and spurring innovation and development.
The world is a macrocosm of multilingualism, with over 7,000 distinct languages and multiple dialects spoken across cultures.
A pluralistic nation like India mirrors this phenomenon with 22 official languages and 6,000 dialects spoken. Since the last few years, mother languages have been grabbing innovator attention globally, particularly in India.
Platform enterprises have long realised the potential of Indic languages, spoken by over 90 per cent of 1.35 billion Indians. They have re-engineered their solutions to offer intuitive experiences to speakers of native languages.
From digital banking, online shopping and payments to ordering food or booking office commute through ride-hailing apps, interfaces that support multiple languages have been re-shaping lifestyles in a digital-first economy.
But even as businesses have built complex algorithms to enable online payments and transactions in mother languages, the primary use case of ‘expression’ on the open internet, a fundamental need in society, has thus far remained largely untapped.
Speakers of mother languages, who otherwise lead virtual lives by shopping and transacting online, are left outside the realm of online expression due to their inability to speak English.
The need for multilingual expression to build language inclusive society
As people from other cultures, Indians are also known to have opinions on almost everything that happens in the world. People love to express themselves, and they speak best in the language closest to them.
‘Expression’ is inherent in each individual, and the need to express online holds tremendous significance in this ‘techade’.
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However, ‘expressions’ have mainly remained offline and restricted to close social circles due to the English-centric approach of global tech giants, which has prevented native language speakers from joining social platforms and engaging in a language of their comfort.
A multilingual country like India, with 658 million internet users, including 467 million social media enthusiasts (as of January 2022), offers significant opportunities to social platforms to enable Indic language expression.
By leveraging disruptive technologies like the AI-backed Natural Language Processing (NLP), which decode human language and the attached nuances, platforms can build solutions that break down linguistic barriers and act as enablers towards building an inclusive society, where users express themselves and engage with one another in a language of their choice.
Key to hockey stick growth of social platforms
The real key to a digitally connected world, in addition to enabling expression in mother languages, is the real-time translation of a message across multiple languages, amplifying user outreach.
A seamless dialogue between speakers of two native languages like Punjabi and Tamil or Assamese and Gujarati on a real-time basis would take digital transformation to a whole new level.
Platforms that are architected to enable creators to build content in one language and users to consume it in another language induce immense gratification and build sticky user journeys.
The hockey stick growth in Indian language content through broader adoption of language inclusive platforms and translations of this content in multiple languages will result in content that everyone can generate and consume irrespective of their language preference, steering digital empowerment.
The incredible power that mother languages command will help catalyse growth and innovation, digitise the ‘un-digitised’, and democratise people’s voice in a transformative tech-driven world.
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