impressive and now its Hindi edition is also there in the market and this is even worse. After going through this launch issue of Hindi edition, I am wondering why this product is launched at all? If it was meant to be a substandard product the way it is, then what was the need for creating it? Why the people behind this kind of poor ‘language-edition’ don’t respect their audience or at least their own product’s credibility?This Hindi edition of ‘CAREERS360’ is just a great example of careless execution of localization of any content product. Though, it is published by Mr. Maheshwer Peri (Pathfinder Publishing Pvt. Ltd.), still in terms quality or presentation it is nowhere close to any product of Outlook group.
What is wrong in it?
Hindi edition of CAREERS360 has a long list of unforgivable problems as follows and all of these make it a bad product-
- Content (at major) is created for English edition
- Poor and even wrong translation (and sometimes literal translation)
- Substandard copy desk work (poor sentence structure and erroneous grammar)
- Careless proofing (spelling, punctuation, typo and software related errors)
- Inconsistent usage of language (Urdu/Devnagri/English/English words in devnagri script)
- At places some words are used in local slangs and some places its literary
- Inconsistent usage of spelling at different place of a single word
- No writing guidelines are followed
- No editing style sheet is followed
- Not connecting to the audience (irrelevant examples are given)
- Content is already published 3-4 months ago in its English edition
- Not a single exclusive article for Hindi edition that could be used to highlight on the cover
How can be a product so wrong?
Content
It is badly ‘created’! I don’t think that any reader will be able to connect to it. Bad language, spelling mistakes, mix of various languages like Urdu, English, Literary Hindi, street level Hindi and what not…! While reading such a bad language, it is difficult for anyone to concentrate and appreciate the subject or the issue discussed in the article.
I strongly believe that the content requirement for both the editions audience is exactly the same and hence the content should be also the same. The only acceptable difference is of the language, that’s it. But, its Editor Mr. Mahesh Sarma, is perhaps confused to how to treat them differently. And this perceived difference is not a small to him but it is huge and is clearly visible at many places in the magazine. Huge difference in pricing of the both the products, Content quantity served for both the readers, Quality of content (unverified, misspelled, poorly edited) given to the Hindi audience that you cannot even think of putting in English edition. That kind of negligence shows how sincerely you are taking your product and your target audience.
Just to prove my point here- the launch issue of CAREERS360 Hindi is carrying the cover story which is also published in English edition in the March 2010 issue i.e. ‘India’s Best Students’. In the English edition, this article is listing the names & success stories of 40 great students. (As it is very subjective and debatable methodology of preparing this list... but let’s not get into this for this point of time.) This list was just to motivate the students that even they can follow their path and get succeed in the life… it was no where related to language you speak. Then how come the list is cut down to 18 profiles only when it is published in Hindi edition??? Other 22, who are dropped from this list, were not useful or relevant for Hindi audience or what? I can’t even think any reason of dropping their names. If space was the constraint, it could be managed by cutting copy within the description… but at least all forty should be remained there in the list. Otherwise entire list could be given in a small box along with the description of selected ones.
Same sort of lacking of quality is there in translation (from English edition to Hindi edition)- it is bad and at some points it is wrong also! Spellings are written differently and even wrong at different places. If these kinds of errors are not bearable for English edition, how can one treat a language edition that way?
Apart from that, there is no structure of writing articles in this issue and articles are edited very badly. Same is with the structure of entire magazine that it is not clearly defined. Badly translated/adopted section names are not coming out properly.
Design
That is also lifted from its English edition... even though it is not so great! And this could be height of negligence that while lifting design elements from English edition there are few elements were kept as it is they were designed using English script only. They look out of the place when they appear in the Hindi edition.
Lots of design inconsistencies are there that clearly shows the lack of design style sheet. No design philosophy is followed in blurbs (typo & colors) and in headlines/sub heads etc. Cover story of the launch issue and even the edit page is laid out badly. Throughout the magazine, lots of elements like boxes, tables, box heads, and titles of illustrations are treated very thoughtlessly. That leaves very bad taste while browsing entire magazine from start to end.
Printing
At least that is the only thing which can be considered ok. Prepress work also is fine (may be because all the design elements, illustrations & photographs are lifted from English edition) in the magazine.
Product
Looking at the cover price which is kept very low as Rs.15 for this monthly magazine and the content quality it offers, it is not the product worth to appreciate.
Career, itself is the genre that has lots of scope of making a great product (regardless of language) that can spread like a fire in the jungle if served the relevant & quality content to the readers. But right now, the Hindi edition of CARRERS360 is in very bad shape which needs to be improved a lot. As Mr. Peri has said in one interview with exchange4media that Hindi market has a huge opportunity if rightly priced… with due respect, I would humbly like to say that- sure, it has huge opportunity only if ‘right served’. It can be priced at our own terms later if readers find it relevant, useful & indispensable for their life… their career!
