In a major and important announcement that should cheer a lot of Indian computer users, Microsoft has introduced support for 15 Indian languages within its frequently used software. This means email addresses can be stored on Microsoft Outlook in the local languages and used for sending out mails from their personal computers.
The programs where these languages can now work are Office 365, Outlook 2016, Outlook.com, Exchange Online and Exchange Online Protection (EOP). Microsoft used the occasion of the International Mother Language Day to make this announcement.
This practically makes seamless sending, receiving mails to and from local language e-mail addresses via Outlook client on PCs, Outlook.com etc., a possibility. Apart from this, Outlook apps for Android and IOS will also be enabled to permit the use of these languages to communicate.
"Ensuring that language is not a barrier to the adoption of technology is key for digital inclusion and growth. Making email addresses available in 15 languages is an exciting step to making modern communications and collaboration tools more accessible and easier to use for all - something we have been relentlessly working towards. We're making technology use the language of people, and not requiring people to first learn the traditional language of technology," NDTV Gadgets quotes Meetul Patel, COO - Microsoft India as saying.
There is already, an initiative, Email Address Internationalisation (EAI) and the present move by Microsoft is a step towards supporting this initiative. In this round, the local Indian languages chosen are the ones that support the international coding standard, Unicode. Microsoft may keep adding more languages going ahead.
Already, Microsoft has integrated artificial intelligence technology and Deep Neuro Networks (DNN) with its systems to enable better real-time translation of 3 key Indian languages, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.
With this, the users can immensely benefit when they are using the Microsoft Edge browser to search for information on sites like Bing search, Bing Translator or while using any Microsoft’s programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Skype.