Up until first grade I spoke and wrote in Punjabi when my parents decided to move back home and put me in an “English speaking” school. Teachers threatened to deny admission if I didn’t learn to speak in English in the first year of being there. Ever since then, my parents spoke to me in English at home and I began to write, speak and think in English. While I learnt to read and write Hindi as my second language in school, I never really attempted to improve my fluency in this alternative and poetic language.

So in a recent forum when Indian Usability & Information Architecture professionals began discussing Hindi translations for “interaction design” and emerging practices in their field, I was suddenly reminded of my lack of proficiency to think in Hindi. What would Usability or Information Architecture mean in Hindi? They can’t be literal translations as they would fail in meaning. But finding the right word is a challenge and the slew of posts have been discussing just that. I am curious to learn about the outcome if any. My sense is that this is going to be an ongoing discussion.

In the meantime, I’ll stick to English and hope that in some way I can practice my Hindi and begin to think in a language that offers a limitless ocean of creativity which when explored can create poetic intonations that English as a language fails to offer.