1. Testing Challenges in Indic Languages
Irfan Ahmad, Lead Quality Engineer
QA InfoTech

2. Abstract
Thanks to digital India campaign, demonetization and emergence of cashless economy, now not just only homegrown starts-up, a lot of global companies are also entering into Indic market and willing to give full-fledged Indic languages support in their products. In fact, of late they understand that English language user base in India is just around 10%. Some experts also predict that in future, some of the Indic languages may give a stiff competition to some of the European languages in terms of user base and software subscription if given a full-fledged support in all vernacular languages. In this presentation, I shall draw the light on the enablement and testing challenges in 10 major languages - Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi and Oria – which are commercially established. In terms of challenges, they are so many and start right from enablement phase to internationalization, localization of UI and shipping product in a particular language market. A simple example of challenge is how to enable culture friendly emoticons/stickers in a product on the occasion of Holi which doesn’t have a significant relevance in South India; similarly the case is with Onam and Pongal in North India. This paper tries to decode some of these testing challenges in enablement and integration phases using linguistic and cultural rules and how the whole process of localization and linguistic testing in Indic languages with the help of crowd-sourcing can be made smooth and seamless.

3. Agenda Introduction to Testing Challenges in Indic Languages
Testing Challenges in Enablement Phase
Decoding Enablement Challenges Using Linguistic Rules
Testing Challenges in Integration Phase
Solutions
Takeaways

4. Introduction To Testing Challenges in Indic

5. Violation of Localization Industry Standards

6. Market Impact

7. 3 Ts of Localization Industry

8. Example:

9. Testing Challenges in Enablement Phase

10. All Syllables/ Clustered Conjuncts
Mono Syllables
Bi or Di Syllables
Tri Syllables
Poly Syllables

11. Testing Challenges in Integration Phase
Text Engine
Fonts
Keyboard

12. Integration Failure With Examples
Hindi
Telugu
Kannada

13. Solutions Solutions Knowledge of Localization Industry Standards (3Ts)
Bug fixing solution triage: Linguists & developers co-ordination
Three eyes view process
Early involvement of linguists at design phase
Knowledge of Localization Industry Standards (3Ts)

14. Takeaways
Due to Digital India campaign, Indic languages have huge potential and market value
With the growing demand of Indic support, understanding & implementation of Indic testing will become very important
Not just language, cultural & domain specific knowledge is also must

15. References & Appendix
Logo Courtesy FICCI-Indian Language Internet Alliance (FICCI-ILIA)

16. Author Biography
Irfan Ahmad is a well experienced software QA for complex layout scripts (text), such as RTL (Right-To-Left), & Indic languages that are widely used in MENA (Middle East & North Africa) and South Asian Markets. He successfully helped Large ISVs such as Adobe to localize some of it’s flagship products, in MENA and south Asian markets. He has an M.Phil degree in software localization from JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University), New Delhi, one of India's premier institute for languages, culture, humanities and social sciences. He recently spoke to UN's general assembly in front of world leaders on how localization of technologies for all in their own native languages and promotion of multilingualism and multiculturalism will help UN achieve millennium sustainable development goals. He spoke to various other international forums like STC and EuroStar. He is Author - Researcher & Co-inventor of a software patent.

17. Thank You!!!