Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

pri.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 286 posts

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#151

Post by chaz »

r0h1n wrote: post #64

Colour me cynical, but when a corporation is under fire from consumers, regulators and activists, a soppy and heartstring-tugging ad is exactly what the doctors order . It is literally Google saying, "Oh look, cute puppies!" when faced with a global barrage of criticism about its disdain for user privacy or its own past promises.

Google's done several commercials, well before any of the recent furor. One of the first was "Parisian Love" which aired during the Superbowl in 2010. The more memorable one was "Dear Sophie" in 2011 which got a lot more coverage, and I believed that aired in the US as well. I'm not as cynical as you are about Google's motives here, but i would think that airing ads in the US would have far more of an impact on the US public and regulators than a foreign language ad in India.

Parisian Love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU Dear Sophie Lee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#152

Post by sameerds »

techtivist wrote: post #135
guyzero wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official languages of India are Hindi and English.

Not to be pedantic but Hindi is not India's official language, it's only English. Hindi is the national language but English is still the only language for official communications including that of the government. Not sure about Urdu's status in Pakistan though.

Given all the comments about Google and Wikipedia, it's funny how you forgot to lookup Hindi. It is in fact an official language of India. Please gets your facts right.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#153

Post by mcv »

dsrguru wrote: post #121
nekopa wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A side note: as a teenager I spent one summer working in a clothing store in London, with a bunch of Spaniards and Italians. They spoke to each other using their respective tongue, and said they could understand each other. Just basics of course. Maybe someone from Spain or Italy could chime in here?

As with the Arabic and Chinese language families, different varieties of Romance languages are similar enough in syntax and vocabulary that speakers can kind of make themselves understood to each other if they speak slowly and choose their words carefully. Same with lots of closely related languages, e.g. German and Dutch. But they're not nearly mutually intelligible to the degree that American English and most varie…

I'm Dutch, and people from the east of Netherland don't understand why I don't understand German, claiming the languages are so similar. But I have real trouble understanding German. Maybe when it's someone from the north-west of Germany who speaks very slowly and clearly. People from the east of Netherland have much less trouble, somehow.

(I'm utterly unable to understand people from the Dutch province of Zeeland when they're speaking to their parents. That's complete gibberish to me, though it doesn't have a special status as a local language, as far as I know. (unlike Nethersaxon, for example))

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#154

Post by jdaley »

r0h1n wrote: post #64

Colour me cynical, but when a corporation is under fire from consumers, regulators and activists, a soppy and heartstring-tugging ad is exactly what the doctors order . It is literally Google saying, "Oh look, cute puppies!" when faced with a global barrage of criticism about its disdain for user privacy or its own past promises.

Why is it such a huge revelation that advertising is created to benefit a business?

You've got a beautifully produced and captivating video, which makes no secret about advertising something. People enjoy it and engage with it, but then suddenly catch themselves: "Oh no! What if this advertisement was created... for profit?"

Of course it was! So what?

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#155

Post by eklavya »

pknerd wrote: post #136
harichinnan wrote: post #33

As a fellow Indian, I just want to point out that this video and any other efforts to develop people-to-people relationships between India and Pakistan have zero effect on the ongoing conflicts between the nations. Indians love Pakistani singers, cricketers, food, their language(Weird, I'm not a native Hindi speaker. But people tell me that Pakistani's speak better Hindi than most Indians). I've heard from Pak friend…

You for got add your RAW and Indian army, mate.

The first step towards mitigating problems is to acknowledge they exist. In the end, you can fool everyone but yourself. Food for thought :)

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#156

Post by cubancigar11 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #94
77ko wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a very different take on this book - instead of copy pasting, I'll just point you to my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/627096724

Sounds like you were looking for a polemic and were disappointed to documentary work instead. Strangely enough I lerned a great deal about colonial misrule of India from reading the same book, but that doesn't make the viewpoints of the pro-empire participants less interesting.

Au contraire. It is not polemic to call a spade a spade. Nor it is documentary work to propagate a biased and watered down version. In fact, it is propaganda. If you have the appetite for colonial misrule these articles might help paint a backdrop:

1. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1908/10/the-new-...

2. http://www.celdf.org/downloads/NATURE%20and%20EMPIRE%20-%20L...

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#157

Post by levosmetalo »

nl wrote: post #97
JPKab wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindi or Urdu? Haha... I always find the "language vs dialect" thing very interesting. The distinction when it comes to Hindi and Urdu is totally political. Two of my old buddies, one an Indian, the other a Pakistani, could completely understand each other, yet both insisted that they spoke different languages (Punjabi/Hindi and Urdu respectively) Another friend of mind, who left Pakistan as a 10 year old, always jus…

Hindi or Urdu? Haha... I always find the "language vs dialect" thing very interesting. The distinction when it comes to Hindi and Urdu is totally political Try Serbo-Croatian[1]. But OTOH, most Slavic languages are fairly similar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian

Well, I would beg to disagree. While the standard Serbian and standard Croatian are very similar, it's more of an artificial. Even when that was one language official, one part of ex country called it Serbo-Croatian, and other one Croato-Serbian, and the versions taught at school were similar, but not the same. There were some language constructs that were in this common language just because they were present in one, and not the other, so that Serbo-Croatian was a strange mix.

Not to mention dialects. Being a native south Serbian speaker, I had much better understanding of Macedonian and Bulgarian than those Croato-Serbian dialects spoken in the western or south Croatia.

I guess if it weren't for that political push to make Serbian and Croatian language the one language, those language would be much more different today than they are. Not to mention that simply choosing another Serbian dialect as standard Serbian, and another Croatian dialect dialect as standard Croatian would make those two languages unintelligible. Instead, it was a political choice to choose two most similar Serbian and Croatian dialect to be official standard language, and then enforce that at schools. I know that for example in southern Croatia people were forced to use standard Croato-Serbian at schools, and people in southern Serbia were, and still are forced to use Serbo-Croatian at schools, TV and all official institution.

Yes, language is a politics, and politics frequently molds languages in the direction it chooses. Orwell was not that far away with reality.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#159

Post by leapinglemur55 »

r0h1n wrote: post #64

Colour me cynical, but when a corporation is under fire from consumers, regulators and activists, a soppy and heartstring-tugging ad is exactly what the doctors order . It is literally Google saying, "Oh look, cute puppies!" when faced with a global barrage of criticism about its disdain for user privacy or its own past promises.

I agree. The fact that Youtube is too slow right now for me to even watch the video is just the icing on the cake...

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#160

Post by johnx123-up »

guyzero wrote: post #71
notatoad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the subtitles might have been a bit more necessary if all the on-screen text wasn't in english. That seemed like a strange choice for an ad produced by Google India.

The official languages of India are Hindi and English.

I can recall some discussion in Wikipedia that suggests India has about 14 official languages (not just Hindi and English).
Post reply on HN