Why transliterate?

I'm still scratching my head over this one.

I got this flyer in the newspaper this morning. One side was in English:


The other was this:

For those not in the know, that's in the Devnagiri script, a common enough device used by marketers in selling to a multilingual audience.

But here's the puzzling thing; the reverse of the English flyer isn't a translation of the English text, it's a TRANSLITERATION!

Now why would a marketer do that? What's the sense in making someone who presumably doesn't know English (hence the Devnagiri script) read sentences that are (more or less) English? (Reverse transliteration turns "T-Shirt" into "T-cert" and "Brand" into "Bra Rund" [ok I won't go into that... Indian readers, go ahead and guffaw]). Why not simply translate the text into Hindi or Marathi (two languages that use the Devnagiri script)?

Here's where it's brilliant marketing (even if it's been done by mistake - serendipity does strike the stupid too):

The number of people who understand English in India (though not necessarily speak it well) is far greater than those who can read it. This number also encompasses those who read exclusively Marathi and those who read exclusively Hindi. However, there is a large number in the Devnagiri-reading population for whom Hindi and Marathi are mutually exclusive languages. So the sub-set that understands Marathi but not Hindi and the sub-set that understands Hindi but not Marathi have two common links - English and the Devnagiri script.

Do you see the brilliance of the transliteration?

The Bihari gardener who doesn't understand Marathi doesn't automatically stop reading because "he knows the characters but the words are alien". The Maharashtrian constable similarly doesn't stop reading (either because he doesn't know Hindi or his "Maharashtrianism" has been insulted by the use of Hindi).

Mum's still giggling over the Bra Rund (well, ok, for the Indianically challenged, that translates into "Bra Prostitute", whatever you make of it) but I think it's brilliant marketing communication.

Deepak