The most boring part of David Yang's physics studies were the French lessons he was required to take. So perhaps it was only natural that the technology-minded student went on to attempt to develop a computer program that can understand and translate natural languages.

Yang, whose father is Chinese and mother is Armenian, started his development work while a student at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in the late 1980s. Now, as head of Abbyy Software House, he is one of the most successful technology entrepreneurs in Russia.

Yang was born in Yerevan, in Soviet Armenia, in 1968. His father was a physics professor at Yerevan University. The family's scientific background was a great help when young David Yang decided to enter the world of computer science.

His idea to create a computer program that could recognize the rules of language came to him during his French language classes. It became his long-term strategy and, while he has not reached his goal yet, the search has led him and his company, Abbyy, to launch two programs that have became widely successful - Lingvo, a Russian-English dictionary, and Fine Reader, an Optical Character Recognition text scanner.

One of the key issues facing the software industry in Russia today is software piracy, something that affects his company directly. Yang said his company does not fight illegal users, only illegal distributors.

"The situation in Russia is very tough on everyone now," Yang said. "Many organizations are unable to pay salaries to their workers. We often just turn a blind eye when ministries, education or scientific institutions do not pay for our software."

The company celebrated its 10th anniversary last week by giving away 10 copies of Lingvo each to 1,500 Moscow schools.

"But those organizations that do have cash, pay their employees, buy furniture and computer equipment, must also pay for their software," Yang said. "They must stop stealing."

- VLADIMIR MERKUSHEV