Translation from English to Sanskrit - Why?

When we look at what sort of research work can be considered for a PhD degree, translation is definitely a no-no. Why? There is no individual contribution, value addition or in-depth study involved in literal translation of any work.

Personally, I feel it is a routine job once the initial spadework is done. For eg, translating open source software strings would not be easy if a glossary of common words was not done earlier. Getting the glossary done is a major work. Once that is out of the way, the rest is easy and anyone with the glossary on hand can do the rest of the work. It gets more interesting when there are sentences to be translated.

Windows, Openoffice and other software in Hindi and Tamil are being used widely (definitely in government organisations). But, why sanskrit? The best answer I can give is "Archival purpose". Someone somewhere might use it. Would I use Firefox in Sanskrit? Maybe not now. I might try it but I would most definitely like to see something familiar on my screen and not always try to browse with a dictionary on hand!

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