The localization concept helped Ram achieve prosperity.

Ram is a civil engineering graduate. Though construction projects worth thousands of crores are in progress all over the country, many civil engineers work as site supervisors for a few thousands a month. Some engineers work as lecturers in unrecognized engineering colleges under oppressive management for even smaller pay packets. Ram belonged to that unfortunate category and worked in a small engineering college in rural area.

But his creativity and thirst for freedom did not allow him to continue in the job he did not like. So, one fine day, he decided to become a free bird and within an hour he quit his job.

The following day he was in Bangalore. He had a few hundred rupees, a few thousand ideas and a few million dreams. His friend allowed Ram to stay in his room for a few days until he found a job. Ram never told him that he did not come to Bangalore searching for a job.

“After a fortnight I did not have any money. I was not sure whether my friend would continue to be a friend if he came to know about my situation. I was walking in the streets of Bangalore without an aim. Suddenly a notice board caught my attention. ‘Want to be a successful entrepreneur? Run into ABC hall,’ was the message. Immediately I went into that conference hall just out of curiosity,” said Ram.

“Was that a turning point in your life?” I asked him.

“Yes, indeed it was,” said Ram and continued, “A management consultant spoke to a small group of people like me about the importance of self-employment and entrepreneurship. He explained how national prosperity and entrepreneurship are closely related. His speech was elevating and inspiring. At the end of the meeting he offered an extra-ordinary proposal. ‘I will give you training in entrepreneurship and during the period of training you will receive a stipend of Rs.5,000. After the completion of training, you are free to choose your path. But, my only request is you must spread the message of entrepreneurship to other young persons.’ Many participants suspected hidden motives and did not join the training program. But I happily joined it because it was what I had been looking for and I was getting it with a bonus of Rs.5,000.”

“It’s quite interesting,” I said.

“I received training in eBook building, content creation and Adobe FrameMaker. After a few months, When I was confident about my skills I joined a website company as a content creator for Rs.10,000 a month. I wanted to gain real life experience for a few months before launching my own company. I worked hard and within a year the management increased my salary to Rs.25,000,” said Ram.

“That’s fabulous!” I exclaimed. “But no bird likes to live in a cage, even if it is golden. After gaining experience, I quit the job and became a freelancer. I specialize in web content localization. Generally, localization means the determination of the locality of an object and the adaptation of it to the locality. An example is in software localization, where the messages that a program presents to a user need to be translated into various languages. Language localization refers to the process of adapting a language for a specific country or region. As I believe that the internet is the future, I have decided to concentrate in web content localization,” he said.

“How do you get assignment and how much do you earn?” I asked him with some hesitation. Ram replied,“Big translation companies are usually run by a small number of people without any infrastructure. They have good contacts and get assignments for web content translation and localization worth millions of Rupees from multinational companies. They get Rs.2 to Rs.3 per word. They subcontract the work to freelancers like me and I get Rs.1.50 per word. Every day I will receive English content in Microsoft Word document. I translate the content into Kannada and send the document in Kannada to my agent in email. I translate 1500 words a day.”

“That’s lot of money. What special skills do you need to do the work?” I asked. He said, “Anyone with good writing skills in his or her mother tongue and a capacity to understand English content can do this work successfully. And you must learn how to type in local language because Indian fonts need special treatment.”

“Did your Engineering degree play any role in your progress?” I asked him. “No. Our education system manufactures certificate-worshipping graduates without any employable skills,” said Ram regretfully.

Do you agree with him? I do.