Languages of India · 15 entries
A buyer does not switch to English because your software would prefer it. They type the way they speak, in whichever script their keyboard is set to, and they mix the two in one sentence without noticing. None of these messages was translated before it reached the agent, and none of them had to be.
Yes — a message is answered in the language and script it arrived in, whether that is Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali or Roman-typed Marwari. The language is not a setting somebody picks per business; it is read off the message itself, one message at a time.
Every message below is shown as it arrived, not translated first.
No transliteration step, and no English in the middle
— the two questions that come before every order
ஸ்டாக் இருக்கா? ரேட் என்ன?
UC-094TAMILCHENNAIMUKTA MALAR
What you'll observe
Both answered in Tamil, from your live stock and that buyer's tier. The reply does not arrive in English with a Tamil greeting bolted on the front.
— a price question and a quantity, in one line
ભાવ શું છે? પચાસ પેટી જોઈએ
UC-096GUJARATIRAJKOTMUKTA VAANI
What you'll observe
Priced at their tier and drafted for fifty. “Peti” is read as the trade unit it is, not as a word it could not place.
— Devanagari, but not Hindi
किती रुपये? उद्या पाहिजे
UC-097MARATHINASHIKMUKTA
What you'll observe
Answered in Marathi. Sharing a script with Hindi does not make it Hindi, and a reply in the wrong one of the two is the tell that nobody read the message.
— Gurmukhi, and a deadline
ਕਿੰਨੇ ਪੈਸੇ? ਕੱਲ੍ਹ ਚਾਹੀਦਾ
UC-101PUNJABILUDHIANAMUKTA MAHEE
What you'll observe
The price comes back in Punjabi and the deadline becomes part of the order rather than a line nobody actions.
— written in one script, read most easily in another
قیمت کیا ہے؟ دو پیٹی بھیج دیں
UC-106URDUHYDERABADNOTO NASKH
What you'll observe
The message is read in Urdu script and the reply goes back the way this buyer actually reads — which is frequently Roman. Script in is not automatically script out.
— four words, one of them English
എത്ര? രണ്ട് ബോക്സ്
UC-099MALAYALAMKOCHI
What you'll observe
Answered in Malayalam. “Box” arriving in English inside a Malayalam sentence is ordinary, not a parsing problem.
The language is not English and the script is not its own — this is most of Indian B2B
— a Telugu sentence on an English keyboard
Rate enta? Rendu box pampandi
UC-095TELUGUVIJAYAWADAPALANQUIN
What you'll observe
Read as Telugu, not as misspelt English. The reply goes back the same way it came in.
— three words carrying a price question and a delivery date
Koto? Kal pathiye din
UC-098BENGALIKOLKATAPALANQUIN
What you'll observe
Both parts land: the rate is quoted and tomorrow becomes the requested date rather than a word in a sentence.
— from a Hubli counter, not a metro
Estu rate? Naale beku
UC-100KANNADAHUBLIPALANQUIN
What you'll observe
Answered in Kannada. Coverage that stops at the metros is not coverage of a state.
— two words, and both of them matter
Kete? Kali darkar
UC-102ODIACUTTACKPALANQUIN
What you'll observe
Priced and dated. A language being small in a dataset is not a reason for the buyer to get a worse answer.
— Roman script, Hindi grammar, and numbers counted a third way
What you'll observe
The counting convention is read as counting rather than as a typo. Where a quantity is genuinely ambiguous it is confirmed back before it becomes an order line.
This is the case that punishes a system built on language detection alone: every word looks like Hindi and the numbers do not behave like it.
— a language most software has never been pointed at
What you'll observe
Answered in Assamese where the message is clear, and handed to a person where it is not — not answered confidently in Hindi because that was the nearest thing available.
Three cases a translate-then-answer pipeline gets wrong by design
— Devanagari, Latin and digits inside one sentence
10 बोरा cement भेज दो, rate WhatsApp पे भेजना
UC-107HINDI + ENGLISHKANPURMUKTA, ONE FILE
What you'll observe
Read as one sentence. The quantity, the product and the instruction all come out of it, and nothing is dropped for being in the wrong alphabet.
— an export house answering a foreign buyer in English while the floor works in Tamil
What you'll observe
The buyer's thread stays in English and the floor's stays in Tamil, off the same order. Neither side is asked to read the other's language to do their job.
— peti, gaddi, thaan, bora, gross, kori, tola, maund
What you'll observe
Read as the trade units they are, against what your catalog actually sells in. Where a unit is ambiguous for your goods it is confirmed rather than converted on an assumption.
A wrong conversion here is not a wrong word — it is a wrong quantity, shipped.
No. The language is read from each message rather than set per business, so a buyer who has always written in Hindi and switches to Gujarati mid-thread is answered in Gujarati. There is no list to maintain and no default to fall back to.
It hands the message to a person with the original attached. The failure we design against is a confident answer in the nearest language it did recognise, because that reads like a working system right up until somebody checks it.
It answers from your catalog in the buyer's language, which is not the same as translating your catalog. Your product names stay the names you sell under — a translated SKU is a SKU nobody can search for or reorder.
Ask it: “Stock irukka? Rate enna?”
You're talking to the product. Nothing you send is added to any business's catalog.