By the end of last year Google launched Google Transliteration to help people writing in languages which are not supported by the computer keyboards. As we know that computer keyboards only input characters of Roman script, this narrowed the users of different scripts to write on Internet. Google Transliteration helped in overcoming this barrier. This tool enabled people writing in Arabic, Bengali, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu languages. They were able to write their message phonetically and transliteration converted it into the desired script. A revolutionary breakthrough it has been.
Now there have been additions of Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Oriya and Sinhalese in the above mentioned set of languages. These languages are spoken in North Central Ethiopia, Eriteria, by the Jews, people of Orissa provinces in India and Sri Lanka respectively. I feel this is a sign of Internet or Google becoming more Global.
For the offline use Google gave the world IME (Input Method Editor) which can be downloaded free of cost. IME is also added with 5 more new languages Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit(Ancient Indian language), Serbian and Tigrinya. This is not all IME will now onwards also include canonical schemes, macros and support for Windows 64-bit. To learn more about them you can visit Google Transliteration IME help page.
Well the party is not over yet. Transliteration and IME were designed to help people write in native language with the use of their Roman Script Keyboards. But it didn’t help in going backwards. We mean how can one read a webpage written in some language other then English? One of the answers could be to take help of a friend who knows that language. But where you may find the person who is well versed with Tamil in a place like Tanzania or Russia? Need not to telephone your friends to find such person Google has launched Script Converter tool. This will convert the entire web page, or some text in it to the English from the 17 languages: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
Focus on regional languages like Oriya and Tigrinya points on two things
- Internet gaining popularity in deeper areas we can also say people are becoming IT literate in every part of world to use this boon for their welfare and also for people around them.
- If you want to become big you have to worry about everything large and SMALL. Giant like google may have realized that these interior areas of various nations are golden opportunity. If someone else comes with a tool covering these languages its monopoly will be lost along with its reputation.
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