Interview of Andy Abbar on 17th dec 2004

Group Program Manager of Microsoft Office International

Andy Abbar, shares with BhashaIndia his thoughts on localization and Indic computing. Andy Abbar has a BS in Electrical Engineering from SDSU and MBA from City University, Seattle. He joined Microsoft in 1991 to work on Internationalization of Microsoft products with focus on Office suite of applications. He is now the Director for International Strategic Initiatives of which, localization and locale specific solutions are part of his focus. How long you have been working on Localization, the Microsoft and Unicode platforms and what are the changes you have seen in this period with respect to technical challenges, consumer acceptance and usability issues? A: I have been with Microsoft since 1991 and was part of the original team that developed the international support for Microsoft DOS based applications. It was a great experience seeing how Microsoft had to evolve to meet the needs of our consumers. We had an obligation to ensure that our platform (Windows) and major business productivity suites (Office) have full language support. The challenges were many starting with the lack of agreed standards. The global acceptance of Unicode came in waves and thus Microsoft had to ensure that languages that were part of UNICODE were fully supported. Complex languages such as Hindi (and other Indic languages), bi-directional (such as Arabic) had the most complexity and needed a dedicated team to provide the support, enablement and consultation to the many teams within Microsoft. As you know, we have multiple divisions with dedicated development teams. Some of these teams were working on Windows, on Office and on Internet Explorer to name a few.

Which is the largest non-English language used for computing? Why? When did adaptation of Microsoft products in this language start?

A: Japanese is probably the largest non-English language used for computing. It goes without saying that economic growth is tied to technology and thus the boom of the Japanese economy and the need for computing that supports the Japanese language was the primary driver for this. Of course, it is of no value had Microsoft focused its support on Japanese without having the vision for global support. Today, documents must be exchanged regardless of their origin and having the vision of a platform that is capable to support all languages is what made Microsoft technologies the preferred platform.

How were the non-Unicode days? What were the advantages and disadvantages?

A: Non-Unicode forced languages to be left behind and thus had a major impact on the economies and the technology growth in these markets. It is critical that a standard be followed and regardless of the name of the standard. We can’t think of providing local or regional solutions/standards. We would do our users harm if Microsoft and other software development companies started their own standards.

How did language-computing developments evolve over the years?

A: It is great and very satisfying to see how we managed to impact our users. I realize that our consumers use our products without much thinking of the complexity behind typing a Hindi word followed by an English word followed by an Arabic word that flows from right to left. It is great to see how much the increase of efficiency and productivity has evolved over the years. The days when you had to dedicate a full machine to support one language are over. Today, you are able to provide support for multiple languages with multiple user interface languages to really help bridge the digital divide.

Where does Unicode stand with respect to Indic Computing? In terms of technical challenges, developer community acceptance and usability issues?

A: Today, all Indic languages are in the Unicode standard. We are working on incorporating the few additional scripts such as Sindhi, Sanskrit into our platforms. By providing the language support, the development community is able to fill in the local needs and provide creative solutions such as spelling features, dictionaries, and other locale specific solutions.

What is the future of Unicode in terms of Indic computing?

A: It is the standard that will help unify the exchange of data not just across Indic computing but also across global computing.

How do you compare it with other technologies?

We must allow for innovation and the fact that our users must have choices. However, there is always the need to have a standard way of exchanging data so that our users don’t have to pay the hefty price of compatibility across operating systems, languages and documents.

What technology areas do you think Microsoft should focus/improve?

A: Speech and handwriting are probably the two big areas that we need to focus on by providing the appropriate software development kits to enable the local development communities to build such solutions. I believe with Speech and Handwriting we will address a huge population and in return serve our consumers in a more natural way.

Which are the areas/technologies where Indian Languages and scripts have to improve/enter?

A: I do think that Speech and Handwriting apply to any language/script and the Indic are no exception. Creating a good Optical Character Recognition, or Speech recognizer or a handwriting recognizer will improve the usability of language in the technology domain.

Where do you see Indic Computing opportunities 10 years from now?

A: I do see the Internet playing a big role in Indic computing. The economic growth of India will force more of the big software development companies to put the appropriate resources to allow for machine translation of Indic languages, enhanced language support (speech, handwriting, OCR), Artificial Intelligence and many more consumer/home based software/hardware.