Sify.com, the leading consumer portal from Sify Limited, has said that www.walletwatch.com, its personal finance website, will offer comprehensive coverage of the Union Budget 2005-06 in six Indian languages for its audience across the globe.
"For the first time in the history of Indian Internet portals, the budget coverage is being offered in six Indian languages - English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. The initiative has received encouraging corporate patronage, with Punjab National Bank, Aviva Life Insurance, MakeMyTrip.com and ICICI Bank NRI Services associating as our sponsors," Ajay Nambiar, Head Consumer Channels, Sify.com said.
Resident Indians can catch the live English text coverage on www.walletwatch.com, while the NRI audience can watch the live English text coverage through www.samachar.com the leading NRI website of Sify.com.
Pre-budget coverage has industry experts and the common man’s expectations from the Union Budget. While, the budget day will see day long live coverage, starting with the Union Finance Minister's budget speech, followed by a live analysis from the Sify Digital Studio by a panel of experts. Post-budget coverage will include sectoral impact analyses, feedback from users, live chats on impact on the common man, and useful tools for users to assess the impact of budget proposals on their finances.
The coverage of the Union Budget in five Indian languages, in addition to English, has been enabled by Sify's pioneering work in the area of online publishing in languages. The biggest challenge in Indian language publishing is that of web compatible fonts. Sify.com has been working with various agencies to offer language websites in 'dynamic web fonts', that make browsing easy and error-free for the user.
In addition to tying up with leading language publications like Dainik Jagran and Prajavani, Sify.com has an arrangement with BBC Hindi for the latest headlines on Samachar Hindi, and BBC Hindi content on Sify Hindi. As BBC Hindi uses a Unicode font, Sify.com is working on an online Unicode font converter that will enable BBC Hindi and other Unicode-based alliances.
Sify.com has also launched language editions of Samachar.com in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada, apart from English. The language editions display the latest headlines from leading publications of that language in one common font. This has been enabled by a tie -up with the K B Chandrasekhar Language Project of Anna University, Chennai, to enable online conversion of various fonts to one single font.
Sify has taken the lead in developing multi-lingual versions of its popular portals, as the company believes that proliferation of content in languages is crucial to getting many more Indians to access the Internet. |