Examples disclosed herein relate to distributed computing in R. Some examples disclosed herein may include identifying a distributed multivariate apply (dmapply) operation and an invocation of a distributed computing backend and determining a function referenced in the dmapply operation. A distributed backend driver associated with the invoked distributed computing backend may translate the determined function to a function native to an R application programming interface (API) of the invoked distributed computing backend and may provide the translated function to the invoked distributed computing backend to perform the translated function on a distributed data set referenced in the dmapply operation.