PREDICTABLE OPPORTUNITY
This may change if Tegic Communications, a company that develops software for predictive text, gets its way. It has developed software that allows users to SMS in Xhosa and Zulu.
Predictive text allows cellphone users to make words in SMS messages without using multiple keystrokes for every letter. The phone “predicts” the word as you key in letters.
But whether Xhosa and Zulu will be loaded on to phones is still anyone’s guess, since the decision rests with handset makers such as Nokia and Motorola
If the handset makers load the software on to their phones, more languages may be used. This depends on how much demand there is for Xhosa and Zulu.
Ray Tsuchiyama, vice president of emerging markets at Tegic Communications, hopes local cellular phone users will put pressure on network operators to get handset makers to load the software.
Operators looking at ways to increase SMS revenues should not dismiss the idea of predictive text in local languages too quickly. Tsuchiyama says when Tegic Communications launched predictive text in the late 1990s, operators saw no point in it because until then they had been getting little revenue from SMS services.
This view changed when they saw that phones with predictive text software were sending twice as many SMSs than those without.
Tsuchiyama says despite the global nature of the telecommunications industry, people continue to use cellular phones to communicate with friends and family in local dialects. Providing cellular phone users with a means to correspond in their own language therefore makes business sense.
There is an added benefit to providing predictive text in local languages. It fosters literacy in developing countries because people feel more comfortable spelling in their own language than in English.
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