Updated Below At the Internet Governance Forum being held in Hyderabad, Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of Rediff.com said that there is no evidence from the last ten years of the Internet business that users want Indian languages. Rediff has email in 11 languages, and 99% of the users prefer to use email in English. One of the issues is that "practically all of the 300 million young people who aspire to something in this country aspire to learn English." Therefore "Let us not assume that users want Indian languages." He mentioned that Nokia has experimented with Indic language keyboards, and pointed out Eterno's transliteration app which allows the usage of latin characters for messaging in Indic languages. During the Q&A, Ram Mohan from the audience put forth a significant point on the requirement of multilingual standards - for the creation of a common set of semantics and terminologies, and the need for a framework and a common structure for script and language-based solutions. "We're talking about a problem that begins at the core of the Internet, at the domain name system, and goes all the way to Internet navigation. Multilingualism is often confused with Internationalized Domain Names. One is not the same as the other." He suggested that a standard or a shared model for the adoption of scripts and languages online be created. "...people think languages, but computers work with scripts. And we need to find some common way to bridge that gap. Otherwise, I think we run a real…
