Scandinavian children's literature now in Hindi

Norway has opened its treasure chest of children's literature to vernacular readers in India by translating four Norwegian books in Hindi. This is the second lot of Norwegian children's literature to be translated in English. Last year, the Embassy of Norway had translated four children's books into Hindi.Cover of Pippi Longstocking

The books translated this year include 'Naye Ghar Mein Gadbadi' written by Av Lene Ask, 'Chai ki Ketli' by Jan Kora Olen, 'Dost ya Dushman' by Kala Benedik and Trond Braenne; and 'Rajkumar Bho-Bho' by Bjorn Ousland. The translation projects have been funded by a non-profit Norwegian literary forum, Norla which is supporting the translation of yet another book, 'Out Stealing Horses', a work of fiction by Per Petterson, in three Indian languages. It will be released late autumn.

Besides, the organisation is also helping translate selected works of Norwegian playwright Ibsen in Indian languages. The Norwegian children's books in Hindi are 'pictorial novels' with colourful illustrations and accompanying texts. The books are subsidised and cost Rs.50 each.

Norway, along with Denmark and Sweden has a rich history of children's and young adult's literature. The northern nations' greatest legacy to children's literature are Danish raconteur Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales and Sweden's Astrid Lindgren's cult heroine Pippi Longstocking.

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Useful website for Government employees using Hindi

                    Image via Wikipedia
The committee of Parliament on Official language (संसदीय राजभाषा समिति), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India has created a useful bilingual website which would be helpful for the Central Government employees and Hindi officers. The website is maintained by National Informatics Centre. The website is available at http://rajbhashasamiti.gov.in.

Another useful website is at http://rajbhasha.nic.in.

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IITs flaunt Hindi high

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The number of candidates who cleared the IIT Joint Entrance Examination after taking the test in Hindi is three times the number in 2009, apparently bucking a trend of poor performances despite question paper errors disadvantaging them.

As many as 554 candidates who took the test in Hindi have qualified, compared with 184 last year, the IITs said while declaring their results today after over a month of controversy over instruction errors.

The IIT decision to declare the number of Hindi qualifiers was a first and was a direct outcome of concerns that the errors in question papers selectively hurt students who took the test in that language.

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 entirely 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).