I’m in an Internet cafe in Mumbai. I tried to install Firefox with the Marathi interface, but on the computers here fonts for languages of India are not installed. That’s right – on computers in India fonts for languages of India are not installed. Hence, installing Firefox in Marathi failed at the very first stage, because the fonts are needed for the installation wizard.
Actually, I’m not surprised that these fonts are not installed, because it’s not my first time in India. I know that it happens a lot in this country. I would install them, but I don’t have a permission.
I find it incredibly weird – and tragic – that so many people in India don’t even try to use computers in any language except English. The one curious thing that I did find was an “English typing computer” shop. It’s just a place where you can use a computer to write Word documents in Hindi or Marathi, but using an English-based transliteration keyboard rather than the standard Indian Devanagari InScript keyboard, because they find transliteration keyboards easier. Of course, they could just install such a keyboard layout on their computers… but they prefer to go to an “English typing computer” shop.
We, software internationalization people, have so much more work to do.
