Man Claims Machines At China Airport Speak To Indian Passport Holders In Hindi

An Indian man who was visiting China was surprised when he found that a machine at the airport automatically started showing instructions in Hindi after detecting his Indian passport. Shantanu Goel shared this discovery on X alongside two pictures. One of the photos showed a row of fingerprint-scanning machines and another photo showed the machine giving instructions in Hindi that were written in Devnagri script alongside Chinese script. The instructions asked the person to press four fingers of their right hand on the machine so that it could take fingerprints. While sharing these photos, Shantanu Goel wrote, “Landed in China. These machines speak in Hindi on detecting my Indian passport”

This post has gathered over 4,000 likes since it was posted on Sunday. In the comments, someone asked Goel if the machine had any other languages, to which Goel wrote, “Was using the language of the country (e.g. Spanish, German, French etc). For India, it defaulted to Hindi. Not sure if other languages were an option, didn’t see a choice in interface.”

In the comments, many people argued that while this is a helpful feature for those who are fluent in Hindi, it might cause inconvenience to those Indians who do not understand Hindi.

Highlighting this concern, an X user wrote, “Yes, it’s a good service, but may not be great for a non-hindi speaker. Also, once I asked a Chinese airport officer regarding something, he had a translator app in which he showed me the translated text in Hindi. They all pretty much assume that we speak 1 language (Hindi).”

People also argued that it is better that the machine sticks to English or offers options in other Indian languages. An X user recalled, “I had the same experience in China. This machine communicated in English and it was easier until I selected the country of origin country.once I selected India, it changed to Hindi and it was really tough to understand that the machine’s pronunciation should have been English throughout.”

Back in February 2017, the Chinese government announced that they would start collecting fingerprints and facial images of foreigners who would enter China via ports and airports. This was done to tighten the country’s border security and prevent illegal immigration.

Zhang Jie, a professor at People’s Public Security University told China Daily, “Fingerprinting foreigners can significantly reduce the number of people entering China illegally with other people’s passports. They may look like the pictures on the passports, but their fingerprints will never match the passport holder.”