Indian English: A View From the Trenches

Here's a recent email I received from a blog visitor with a personal perspective on the unique brand of English used in India... an American writer living and working in India:

"I got a kick out of your blog posts dealing with the "quality" of Indian content writing services..."Viagra Delivery Room," "Cheap Offshore Copywriting" and others. Since much of what I have done here has been centered around ensuring quality English writing and editing among a team of Indian content workers, your posts certainly struck a chord with me!

"For the most part, I agree with your assessment that it's "buyer beware" when it comes to outsourcing content work to overseas locations such as India (despite its overhyped English-speaking workforce). Lots of factors contribute to this, most notably that English is not the native language for the overwhelming majority of Indians.

"Still, there are invididuals and organizations here that are committed to improving their written English. While this is an uphill battle for many, there are some interesting opportunities evolving. Most apparent is that people or groups in India that can offer TRUE quality can provide a valuable resource to services like yours, as and when the business scales to the point that it would benefit from some level of outsourcing. On the flip side, while the knowledge sector is growing very rapidly in India, young Indians' skills, particularly in written English, generally lag woefully behind the demand.

"Hence, I believe there's a real need for Indian writer training and education services, in much the same way that Indian call center workers have their spoken English "accent neutralized!" I'm now focusing on a few initiatives that address each of the above."

That's from David Juman, a wonderful and entertaining American writer working in India. You can read more of his stuff here: http://writestuffindia.wordpress.com