Last month, what I assumed as a very innocuous request from my wife, to post a picture on her face-book page wishing everyone a Happy Dasara, turned out to be a ugly situation. The reason; how I had spelt Dasara. I spelt it as Dussera!
In the late eighties, when national campaigns originated mostly from Mumbai and communications was a lot of trouble ( remember Remo Fernandez - 'Ode to Graham Bell), all copy was written in Mumbai. You had a Professor at the Mumbai University Kannada Dept translating copy into Kannada. Today, with communications being so good and copywriters/translators available so easily in the virtual world, why is it that we still see campaigns that do not consider differences in spelling a national festival across regions? All it takes is a understanding of regional variations in how the festival is spelt in the English alphabet. A copywriter living in Mumbai for say 20 or 30years with no regular touch with the region is a terrible mistake as the language, even if technically right, just does not connect. What do you think? Does it matter?
The right spelling is 'Deepavali' since that is what means a 'row of lights', the north Indian spelling is a result of 'shortening' the word. In any way you like to hear it.....Happy Deepavali
In the late eighties, when national campaigns originated mostly from Mumbai and communications was a lot of trouble ( remember Remo Fernandez - 'Ode to Graham Bell), all copy was written in Mumbai. You had a Professor at the Mumbai University Kannada Dept translating copy into Kannada. Today, with communications being so good and copywriters/translators available so easily in the virtual world, why is it that we still see campaigns that do not consider differences in spelling a national festival across regions? All it takes is a understanding of regional variations in how the festival is spelt in the English alphabet. A copywriter living in Mumbai for say 20 or 30years with no regular touch with the region is a terrible mistake as the language, even if technically right, just does not connect. What do you think? Does it matter?
