Read Hindi in Roman using Google Script Convertor

Can you speak a language but are unable to not read its script? Worry not, for the latest innovation from the Google stable will make it easier for you. This new tool from Google labs, called the Script Converter, can help you read text in any language in any script you want, for example you may read Hindi text in Roman script (or vice-versa, as shown in the screen-grab below). The tool currently supports several Indian languages as well as English.

Interestingly such a tool was created by Alok Kumar quite some time back (2005 to be precise) and he had named it "Girgit" (Hindi for Chameleon). The tool is available at http://girgit.chitthajagat.in. Apparently Girgit also supports Gurumukhi (Punjabi) and Oriya (Odiya) not currently supported by Google's converter.

Now Internet URLs enitrely in your own language

Moving away from Latin characters, Internationalized domain names (IDN) or the address that internet users type in the URL can soon be typed entirely in your own language (including the TLD). As result of the initiative by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and C-DAC, by June 2010, typing domain name, like hindionweb.blogspot.com, in any of the 22 Indian language will become a reality.

Initially, it will be available for only new websites with dot in IDNs. A few government domain names such as pradhanmantri.in or bharat.in have been reserved. Despite of this welcome move there are several issues that still need to be resolved, especially issues arising out of the complexity of Indian scripts (for example: how do you distinguish between URLs types in Marathi and Hindi, since both use Devanagari script).

Cisco to localize its router software

Image via CrunchBase

In an interview with Digit magazine, Eskild Hansen, Head of the European Design Centre at Cisco told them what the latter thought of the Indian market in terms of Internet and Wi-Fi usage, as well as what Cisco's plans were for customised content. "India has close to one billion people, so there are a huge number of people who can use the Internet," Hansen said. "Currently, there is no support for Hindi (in our router software), but we are trying to localise it as much as possible."

Lawyers campaign to argue cases in Hindi

Image via Wikipedia

A group of lawyers have started a signature campaign in Delhi High Court and the five district courts of the capital, requesting that they be allowed to argue their cases in Hindi also apart from the English language now used. "We have received a huge response from the lawyers and collected over 3,000 signatures so far to support our campaign," said Ashok Aggarwal, president of the Delhi unit of the lawyers’ association.

"When lawyers argue in Hindi, judges do not pay attention to them and English has become a status symbol," Aggarwal said. Moreover, Article 348 of the constitution provides for arguing court cases in English as well as regional languages, Aggarwal pointed out.

Hindi is being used in the high courts of Rajasthan, Allahabad and Madhya Pradesh, but not in the national capital, according to the lawyers’ union. (Source: IANS)

Indic language script usage growing on Orkut

                               Image via CrunchBase

Medianama interviewed Rahul Kulkarni, a Product Manager at Google India about the newly launched Orkut Zeitgeist. Following were his comments about the growth of use of Indian language scripts on Orkut:

"...we are seeing combination of Hindi-English, Malayalam-English or Kannada-English, Marathi-English. Its difficult to mine or understand this data because in India it is varied - we are talking 26 languages in combination with English...The vast majority (of users) is still in English script, though Indic language is growing, after transliteration was introduced. We see more communities using it. One such is the Hindi poetry community. (Source: Medianama)"

The growth is a welcome change, especially given the fact that Orkut is predominantly student driven in India. As for the "Poetry community" we would rather keep mum ;) Haven't Hindi bloggers tolerated them enough already?

Write in Hindi, Read in Punjabi

Image via Wikipedia

Vishal Goyal, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, Punjabi University, Patiala who is doing Ph.D. under the guidance of Dr. Gurpreet Singh Lehal, Professor, Department of Computer Science has developed a web based machine translation system which can convert text input in Hindi into Punjabi after translation. You may also translate complete Hindi webpages by specifying the URL, though the processing is annoyingly slow at the moment. [Source: Punjab Newsline Network]

Editor's note: We found that presently the system only accepts input text typed using Krutidev, a popular True type font in Hindi, and doesn't work with Unicode. Vishal clarified in his comment that the tool works with Unicode.

Dunia Dekho: A Travel Portal in Hindi

Ghaziabad based digital media company ADS Media has launched a Travel Portal "Dunia Dekho" entirely in Hindi, which they claim is the first such website in the language.Website's editor Arjun Deshpremi believes that the portal would be an excellent resource for Hindi speaking tourists from around the World. The website would also include news items related to the tourism industry and would allow readers to upload their travel anecdotes along with pictures. [Source: Prabhatkhabar]