Becker has done pioneering work in this field His printer driver program 'Khushnavis* is the first computer program that generates Urdu script Professor Becker teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Masdison, in the Department of German Language and Literature He is a gentle and self-effacing man and a tacit lover of Urdu Beside publishing a number of linguistic articles on Urdu (with G C Narang), Professor Becker has also compiled a reverse dictionary of Urdu [See "Bibliographic News "] The following conversation was recorded in Madison Wl in August 1986 Ml- How did you become interested in Urdu7 DB I did my doctorate in linguistics and one of the requirements was that we take at least one year of what they called "exotic" languages. I thought I would study Japanese or Chinese. But it turned out that funds were available for Urdu- Hindi, and that very much settled matters. But my real interest started when one day G.C Narang wandered down to the German Department looking for someone who could help him to decipher some Urdu catechism that a Dutch missionary had put down in writing although it was in Roman script. He couldn't decipher the Urdu because it was very ornate script and he didn't know what he was looking at. So he was looking for someone who could read Dutch and give him a key as to what the letters actually stood for So in looking for this person he came to my office. I was able to help him a bit and as we were going through the text he noticed that I could read some of the Urdu words too He was also interested in linguistics and we decided to write an article on Hindi-Urdu phonology. So we did that. When he returned to India he invited me to India for further collaboration. I went to India a couple of years later and we wrote another article. The next thing we wanted to do was some kind of work on Urdu morphology. In order to do that what we really needed was a reverse Urdu dictionary. I asked, "What's the reverse dictionary of Urdu called7" But there was nothing like that. So in preparation for this more impressive work on Urdu morphology, I thought I would spend six months or a year compiling a reverse Urdu dictionary—because it is very useful if you are interested in suffixes. Well, the six months turned into four years of compiling these three-by-five cards. I think there were over thirty thousand words. Ml: Which dictionaries or books did you use as your sources7 DB A certain dictionary printed in the Soviet Union by one Ansan. Ml- Oh' Zoe Ansan, the translator of Dostoevsky7 Annual of Urdu Studies, #6 117