Murabba, Roshan Seth and the art of Google Search in Hindi…
July 28, 2008
History: Roshan Seth and Murabba
It was years ago perhaps – 1983 or 84 when I went with the IITK contingent to the Lady Shri Ram festival in Delhi. Roshan Seth was the guest of honor/keynote speaker. The actor had by then acquired some notoriety after his role as Nehru in the movie Gandhi by Attenborough.
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Roshan Seth – Nehru 2.0 |
In any case, true to Nehru’s uppity image, he played the snooty ‘convent educated’ anglophile by giving a perfectly accented speech. He then proceeded to go down the agenda and said something to the effect… “I know what English JAM* is but what is Hindi JAM?”.
*JAM as we all know stands for Jest-A-Minute, and Mr. Seth’s question seemed not so much about getting an answer as much as making a statement. There was a long awkward silence in the auditorium when all the ‘cats’ (as the city boys were undeservedly known as) and the ‘bihari’s (as the country boys were undeservedly known as) squirmed uncomfortably.
And then right next to me was Vach (for Vachaspati) who shot his hand in the air and yelled out “Murabba! Hindi JAM is known as Murabba!”. The whole auditorium burst into laughter and a sheepish Sheth slunk off the stage.
That brings me to what this post was really meant to be about – which was searching for Jam and Murabba in Google’s Hind Search. Read on.
Google ki khoj mein (or is it Google ki godh mein?):
Note: This is my unofficial rendering of the Google logo in Hindi. To know how I did it, mail me. Was pretty cool. Also notice the small superscript which is the phonetic equivalent for T and M for trademark.
Anyway I did get a chance to give Google’s Hindi language search engine a test drive today. It was pretty awesome. Very well put together, fast, anticipatory and the results were very comprehensive.
The first two words I typed in English were jam and murabba! Worked great except they had not integrated their awesome translation tools into this.
It accepted inputs in Hindi and in English. When the search keywords were obviously English it offered no prompts.
When I tried inputting anything in English that phonetically sounded Hinglish or when the names were obviously Indian it prompted me with a variety of choices in Devanagari drop down. I typed in the word Shah and it offered शऱुख खान (Shah Rukh Khan as an option).
Nice job so far. But areas they could improve upon (if u know guys in Google India – do pass this on).
| no. | feedback |
| 1 | If the search keywords are typed in English and are clearly English words – then offer closest Hindi translations with their English meaning. |
| 2 | Make all links on top left bi-lingual (for example do the hinglish on Gmail). |
| 3 | Get an on-screen drop down keyboard for someone to type in words in Devanagari. Or better yet acquire http://www.gate2home.com. Nice app fully integrated with a tie into Google Search. |
| 4 | U have no ads on even the best of keywords. Looks pretty bare. At least stick some public service ads on family planning and Aids awareness. |
| 5 | Give your India Ad sales team a k**k in the pants and ask them to think out of box in how to get the market bootstrapped. Awareness, marketing and man-in-loop solutions can all help jump start the Hindi Long Tail. |
| 6 | Consider a Hindi Logo… |
And let us not forget Guruji! 
Guruji did a better job in having an on-screen Hindi keyboard. But getting to know they had local language search itself was hard – its hidden away on the top right like a guilty secret. They had pretty good prompting of phonetically similar words in Hindi – so assisting someone who knew hinglish but still did not integrate a translator prompting word meaningful word choices. Shah Rukh Khan ended up being spelt wrong in Hindi. And just like Google – they had no ads and their logo remained firmly rooted in English.
And of course I could never end up spelling Murabba properly on the keyboard! See, there seemed to be no easy way to type the half ‘b’ sound in Hindi, using their on screen keyboard.
Seems like after all these years we still have bridged the gap between English Jam, Hindi Jam and Murabba. Any takers?
Entry Filed under: Interactive Marketing, Search misunderstood. Tags: Devanagari keyboard, google india, google Logo, guruji, Hindi Keyboard, Hindi Search, Murabba, Roshan Seth.
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