Google Transliteration now Available in Urdu and Punjabi

Image via Wikipedia

"Urdu brought with it some unique challenges: since it is written right to left, we needed to ensure that editing functions such as backspace, tab, etc all work as expected. Urdu diacriticals, or 'Aerabs', also needed special attention as they map the vowel sounds but are not necessarily visible in the word. For Punjabi, the 'addak', 'tippi' and 'bindi' posed its own challenge as they change the intonation of the previous character. "[Read details at Google blog]

Penguin Indian goes to Britain

Penguin India is to launch its 2,000-strong back list into the UK and Europe via Gardners, targeting the UK's Indian population as well as those with an interest in India. An initial 100 titles are to be exported, most of which are English language titles, though a handful will be in the Indian languages of Hindi, Marathi and Urdu. The launch titles will cover fiction, non-fiction and children's apart from other favorites like the Penguin Hindi-English English-Hindi Dictionary and Thesaurus by Arvind Kumar and Kusum Kumar. [Source]

Free texbooks from NCERT, on web

Image from WikipediaStian, who blogs on education, was delighted to find free course ware of NCERT on the web in English, Hindi and Urdu. The material is available in PDF format. Stian opines :

There are all kinds of reasons to applaud this. As a student of Hindi, I love reading the readers made for the initial grades (with beautiful illustrations!), and as I move up, I can use the texts in parallel, reading the Hindi and checking with the English that I understood. Just like I suggested that the huge amount of Open Course Ware films of classroom lectures from all around the world, especially China and India, might be a gigantic boon to a comparative curriculum researcher, these text books would also be great for someone studying curriculum and pedagogics in India.

When Indian parampara becomes Pakistani wordspeak

Indian television serials are part of everyday life in Pakistan and slowly changing everyday vocabulary with words like 'parivar', 'prarthana' and 'parivartan' creeping in. [Read full story]