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]

Hindi catches on in Amrikan schools

Uncle Sam is generously funding US schools to teach students foreign languages deemed vital to its economy and national security. First, it was Chinese and Arabic, and now there is a great effort to teach Hindi. The demand for Hindi teachers and course material has snowballed. Top US universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania offer Hindi. [Read full news at DNA]

IPLKhabar: New Hindi website on IPL

With 8 days to go to IPL-2 Hindi blogger Pratik Pandey has launched a new Hindi website IPLKhabar that provides match timetable, team and player profiles, news and tidbits in Hindi. (A related news about another Hindi IPL website is here.)

Lok Sabha website now in Hindi too

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee launched the Hindi website of the lower house on 7 Jan 2008. Addressing the launching ceremony at Parliament Library Building, the speaker said the launch of the Hindi website would be beneficial for MPs and the Lok Sabha secretariat. "The Hindi website will help bring parliament nearer to the people," Chatterjee said.

Appreciating the efforts of the officials of the secretariat and National Informatics Centre for launching the website, Chatterjee said: ‘One will be able to access the information on parliamentary activities online in Hindi.’ Lok Sabha Secretary General P.D.T. Achary said: "Now, members will be able to access the information on parliamentary activities online in Hindi as well, thereby helping them discharge their parliamentary tasks more quickly and effectively."

The English website of Lok Sabha exists at http://loksabha.nic.in and the new Hindi website is at http://164.100.24.207/loksabha_hindi/loksabha.htm (link also available from the English website).

Firefox in Hindi, its finally here

Firefox has finally been able to mend its mistake of dumping Hindi in its major release 3.0. Firefox Hindi is now available (also, Marathi, Bengali and Telugu). Its still in beta. This release also contains a lot of fixes. You may download 3.0.3 here. [via]