Gained in translation: Why spending on learning Indian language makes sense

As companies seek to impress people in all parts of the country, there is a demand for expertise in local dialogue

E-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart do business in Indian languages; Google and Microsoft Bing searches have long been 'regional' and streaming platforms' greatest hits come from the states. As a CII report put it: “regional is the new national”.

“I believe language is one of the most important aspects of your identity. There are proverbs and sayings which have roots in the history of a particular region. When you learn the language, you learn history and culture which are intertwined and therefore you cannot disassociate language from culture,” said Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, president of Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).

“"ICCR is conducting classes in Sanskrit, Hindi and various other Indian languages globally such as in Israel, we have come across the demand for Marathi. I would advise every Indian to learn apart from mother tongue, English, Hindi at least one other native Indian language," he said.

Companies, politicians and administrators need Indian languages to reach the masses, for English will take you to barely 2 per cent of the population. Technology is helping people to translate and communicate in Indian languages.

In May 2022, Google Translate introduced Sanskrit along with offering Assamese, Bhojpuri, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, Mizo and Meiteilon (Manipuri) earlier. “There is a long tail of languages that are underrepresented on the web today and translating them is a hard technical problem since translation models are usually trained with bilingual text. However, there is not enough publicly available bilingual text for every language,” said Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google and Alphabet Inc, in a blog post in May 2022.

More people are learning Indian languages, say experts. “The Indian government is taking several steps to promote education in regional languages, which will not only help students to learn with their full potential but will also promote different languages of India at the international level," said a spokesperson for TechSci Research, a Delhi-based management consulting firm.

"Moreover, when people shift from one state to another, there is a communication gap that can be filled by learning the native language, which creates a high demand for apps for learning Indian languages. Additionally, the government launched Bhasha Sangam, a mobile app where kids can learn words and sentences in 22 languages,” said the spokesperson.

Learning India

The Indian Vernacular Content Market—it has 22 languages and 1,600 dialects--is growing due to the rapid digitalisation in the country. “The vernacular market grew by a CAGR of ~61% during FY 2017-21 and is poised to expand at a CAGR of ~75% by 2027,” said Ken Research, a consultancy firm, in a report titled 'India Vernacular News and Content Market Outlook to 2025'. 

"…the future of conducting business in India will be defined by the relationships that corporations develop with speakers of regional languages. Brands can focus more on effectively connecting with their present consumers and reaching new audiences by using vernacular ads and directing them to language-specific landing pages," it said.

Vernacular digital platforms like Sharechat, Dailyhunt, Koo, Vokal and Pratilipi boomed during the pandemic as people adopted online channels for their day-to-day needs, said the report. 

“The market in terms of value is expected to grow around 100%, because the market is very small with the user growth expected to be around 30%,” said Ranjeet Pratap Singh, founder and chief executive officer of Pratilipi, an online self-publishing and audiobook portal. 

Hindi rises, Sanskrit too

Expertise in Hindi, the language of Northern and Central India, is in demand as companies seek specialists for communication and outreach.

Alka Kaushik, a translator, studied English literature in college before starting a career in Hindi journalism and then becoming a travel writer. “I was told that travel is an elite subject and going Hindi will be suicidal. But within a year I had 7,500 followers on my Hindi blog (Lyf InTransit) and today it is one of the very popular travel blogs and English authors and travel writers often translate my blogs from Hindi to English using apps,” said Kaushik, 52. 

“Hindi speakers are very well-read, have an identity, and have pockets which are deep. For any brand to thrive in India, they have to go vernacular. Any brand which has to reach far and wide has realised that the numbers of vernacular speaker and reader are far more than English speaking audience. Today anyone from Star, ZEE, Amazon, Flipkart and all interfaces communicate in local Indian languages as that is the only way to increase their reach,” she said. 

Sanskrit is no longer used for daily conversation, but people are learning it for cultural, historical and research purposes. “The demand is very high for Sanskrit scholars. There are excellent prospects for a good Sanskrit scholar in the newly emerging area of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics, speech recognition software, Artificial Intelligence, and Indology,” said Rajnish Mishra, professor at the School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

"Besides, every university in the world has a Sanskrit department or chair such as the Harvard Oriental Series (which is 94 volumes) translated from Sanskrit to English. This cannot happen without the involvement of a Sanskrit scholar,” he said.

The Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan will provide an instructor for free to a school wanting to start a Sanskrit course. Open Path Shala, an e-learning platform, provides a basic course in Sanskrit grammar at Rs 499, Sanskrit grammar intermediate at Rs 650 and basic plus intermediate level for Rs 1,149. Multibhashi, an edtech language learning platform, offers a 60-minute Sanskrit class for Rs 99 while 30 classes of 60 min each cost Rs 2,599 and 210 classes Rs 12,999.

“If you want to really know your country, its literature, and culture, then learning Sanskrit is a must, I would say. After all, language is the index of a nation and a treasure trove of its heritage,” said Dr Chandra, a professor at Sanskrit Sansthan, Kendriya Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya.