Microsoft launches Bengali interface

Microsoft Corporation India today signed an MoU with the government of West Bengal for the state-wide rollout of its 'Project Bhasha', a programme aimed at accelerating local language computing.

The MoU was signed for a period of one year, in the presence of state IT minister, Manabendra Mukherjee by IT secretary G D Gautama and Ranjiv Jit Singh, director-business & marketing operations, Microsoft Corporation India.

Under the MoU, Microsoft would collaborate with the government of West Bengal, for deployment of the freely downloadable Bengali language interface pack for Microsoft Windows and Office across government offices.

Singh said, 95 per cent of India's one billion population do not understand English and a vast majority of the segment incidentally was also on the fringes when it comes to access to information technology (IT).

"This obviously implies that if technology has to make an impact at the grassroots it has to be in the local language. Realising this latent need we conceptualised Project Bhasha which is a comprehensive programme aimed at accelerating local language computing in India" he explained.

Microsoft would also assist the state government in setting up of a Bhasha Language Lab at a premier education institute in West Bengal. Through the labs, Microsoft would organise regular events on latest technological trends related to local language based application development.

On the skills front, the company would organise a training workshop for government employees and host a "Writers Workshop" where there would be in-depth discussions on how to use Microsft products with Indian languages.

The minister said, "This complements our government's efforts to ensure that we can take the benefits of IT to the grassroots and ultimately usher in greater level of economic prosperity and growth led by IT adoption."

Today's MoU and the availability of Bengali language support on flagship Microsoft products will be a vital step to deliver in this direction."