Lets face it, the internet in India is getting more popular every day. As it grooms more users, the need for multilingual support increases by leaps and bounds. Google and other web giants have come up with ways to write and publish in Indian Regional languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.

Reconstruction has been the key for regional language support. The idea behind Transliteration was to spell words from other languages in English, the way they sounded. With a view in mind that computers not always being as intelligent, why don't we make them understand our languages

For instance, in Orkut, when I typed this in the Hindi mode:

Turned out to be:

नमस्कार कैसे हो आप भैया! तुम्हे पता नहीं क्या मैंने पहला नुम्बेर हासिल किया!

Pretty impressive, since 'number' is not a Hindi word, it gave नुम्बेर, but all other words turned out to be accurate indeed. But what about Sanskrit or complicated words? When I tried the Shloka:

It gave the result वक्रतुन्दा महकाया सुर्यकोती समप्रभा

So this proves, transliteration is meant for really common words that can be spelled easily and phonetically correct. Which means a tough time for regional Publishers and Authors.

Another example with a popular transliteration web interface was when I tried:

हिन्दी मे टाइप करना बहुत ही आसान हो गया है

Accurate!

मेने कभी पूरी लाइफ मे नही सोचा था की मे इतनी सरलता से पेश अवँगा

आऊंगा

Okay! Let me try:

झणक झणक पायल बाजे

पूर्णटाहा अप्रातीं सीधांतो मे था चानाकया

I desired:

पुर्णत: अप्रतीम सिधान्तो मे था चाण्क्य

Conclusion: Transliteration can't always be the solution.

Let us highlight some demerits of Transliteration:

1. Silent Characters: There are many silent characters in Languages like Malayalam, Tamil and other Indic scripts which may have different spellings but they are phonetically quite different. For an intelligent transliteration algorithm, it becomes difficult to interpret these words.
2. Emphasis and Consonants: Many languages from South India have a strong emphasis on characters. Consider the example, Reddy becomes रेडी while we want a रेड्डी, chitthi becomes चित्ही, but we expect चिठ्ठी.
3. Hybrid words: Hinglish is today's trend. More publishers want to use hybrid languages from their regions to add some spice into the articles. To write "जब we met" instead of Jab we met, we need a very easy switching mechanism rather than typing some words in the regional language and pasting other english words from a different editor.
4. Diallects, Slang and Subsets: Munnabhai can't think of using transliteration because his language is way too advanced for the algorithm to understand. Eg. Abe cirkit raapchandoos item hai baap, bole toh becomes आबे सर्किट, रापचनदूस आइटम है बाप बोले तो, while Munna would expect अबे सरकिट, रापचाण्डुस आयटम है बाप बोले तो. Also, since a language like Devnagri forms a superset of many other languages (Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Nepali, Konkani, Kashmiri, Sindhi), there is too much effort required to come up with concise algorithms for these.

Lipikaar avoids these demerits, a free Firefox extension that can be downloaded and installed in a jiffy. To top it all, it's very simple to install and use. All you have to do is follow a couple of simple rules for writing and you are ready to write in any of the 15 regional languages supported. Follow some simple rules and you're done!

Why it is different:

• SMS Style: Type the closest sounding English key one or more times, until you see the script character you want.
• X for half: Type x after any character to make it half-character.
• Z for everything else: Type z to get all the special characters and symbols of your script.
• Only alphabet keys are used.
• No struggling with the correct English spellings.
• No popup language keyboards required.
• No guessing or prompting.
• No clumsy keystrokes.

Even the most complicated word can be typed effortlessly in seconds.

Go on, give it a try!

Lipikaar Firefox Extension - How to Download and Install

Note: Make sure you have Firefox installed, and you are running it. If you do not have Firefox, please click here to get it.

Once you are running firefox, follow these steps:

1) On the home page, click on the "Install Now" button which is on the Firefox Plugin Download Section.

You could also click on the "Install Now" button which is on the Firefox Download page.

2) After clicking, you will see a pop-up window shown below in the Firefox browser. Click on "Install Now".

3) Once the installation is over, you will see another window with a "Restart Firefox" button on it's bottom right corner. Click that button so that Firefox restarts with the installation.

4) After Firefox restarts, you will have Lipikaar installed. The inactive Lipikaar icon will show up this time on the bottom right corner, as shown below.

5) On clicking the Lipikaar Icon on the status bar, you will see a menu which gives you some options. Click on "Enable" to start using lipikaar. As an alternative, you can also use the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl+Alt+L" to enable Lipikaar.

6) On clicking the same Lipikaar icon, you can change the language by clicking the menu item "Choose Language" and select the language of your choice.

Congratulations. You are a Lipikaar Now!

Lipikaar is comprehensive. While building it, we considered it's scope of usage and how can it grow in this diverse Indian populace.

For you to get a clearer picture, we present a few examples on how the information age can spread in India. The characters expressed in the following examples are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person(s) living or dead is purely coincidental. Even if there is a coincidence, please take it in the right spirit.

Mr. Ramaswami Venkatappagowda Puttappa worked for 30 years as an accountant to raise his son Darshanam Putappa, get him into the Mysore University to become a doctor and send him to the states. His son gave him a unique gift on his last birthday, a new laptop, with the Lipikaar Desktop Application.

Mr. Puttappa has learned how to use Notepad with Lipikaar!

Badshah in Dubai and his brother Shadab in Mumbai have found an easy way to communicate business matters with each other in Urdu. According to them the thoughts can be expressed really well using Instant Messengers.

They use the Lipikaar Desktop Version and keep Urdu enabled for all internet applications.

Orkut has become so popular in India, that Mani Ben saw her daughter Hetal's activities on the social network, and decided to have a profile for herself! Mani Ben can only read, write and speak Gujarati.

Now she scraps on Orkut using the Free Lipikaar Firefox Extension.

Muruganandan and Srinivasa have to speak in Tamil. These are net-savvy scholars are well versed with English, but hate the use of the language everywhere. Especially when it comes to philosophical discussions. Srinivasa says, "The English people can neither understand Tamil, nor can they understand life!".

But now, they use the Lipikaar Desktop Plugin to discuss in Tamil with each other.

Divyakumari has found her own way to make checklists in Microsoft Excel. Since her employees couldn't understand her spreadsheets in English, she used to have a hard time explaining them specific details.

Today, all her employees are happy because Divya has started using the Lipikaar Desktop Plugin for Telugu Excel sheets!

Mukund saheb is the Sarpanch (head) of a village in Maharashtra. He has big plots of farming land and his job often involves analyzing crops, weather forecasting and other agricultural techniques. He has to make presentations to the Government officials for getting loans sanctioned and for buying more property.

Last few times, he really impressed everyone with his meticulous presentations made with Lipikaar and Microsoft Powerpoint, in Marathi!

Raagesh is tech savvy, he always wanted to get a software that could ease his Malayalam typing efforts. To be precise, his Mallu flirting efforts. He likes the local girl Ammani, who is more impressed with Malayalam poetry.

Raagesh now uses the free Lipikaar Firefox Extension to send his poems through gmail.

Even villages in UP make use of Lipikaar to communicate effectively. They prefer it because there is no scope for physical violence.

Raju and his Chacha are making full use of the Lipikaar Firefox extension to chat using GTalk!

If you do not know anything about Firefox, read on

What is Firefox?

Firefox is the fast new web browser which is making the web fun and easy again. A web browser means a program used to surf the internet, like the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE).

Firefox is free! Through the unique development methods of Open Source, they are able to make a product with impressive speed and less errors than programs developed by traditional methods. It has a number of unique features, and it is overall a great product.

Firefox received amazing reviews and created a lot of buzz on the internet. Within a few months, millions downloaded it, and by mid-2005, Firefox captured more than 10% of the Web browser market. Many view it as a safer and a better alternative to the Internet Explorer (IE).

For more information, visit the Mozilla Foundation.

See the Firefox Wikipedia Page for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox

Getting Firefox installed on your computer is your first step to using it.

An Introduction and installation guidelines for Firefox explained well here: http://opensourcearticles.com/introduction_to_firefox

Extend and Customize

Plugins have traditionally been part of the browser environment, for such tasks as watching Flash movies or viewing PDF documents. Something different has evolved in Firefox, and that is the Extension Manager.

To access the extensions of firefox, go on Tools -> Extensions. But the term Extension Manager is used in a more general way. Extensions are packages that you can install into Firefox that add a new feature to it, to make it do much more than it can, or to improve the overall look and feel. There are many add-ons you want to explore, and select according to your need.

The architecture of Firefox, by being standards-based and open, is ideal to such customizations. You just need to look at the categories on Mozilla Update to get a feel for what else is out there.

Always wanted to express yourself in your favorite language? Couldn't do it well enough? Time to be a LIPIKAAR! Make your opinion count and that too in the language of your choice!!

Lipikaar now comes in two versions. One, a desktop tool. And the other, a Firefox Extension.

Use the desktop tool to type in any application within Windows - Be it Microsoft Office, notepad, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, etc. If you want to type in your languages, while on the Web, then the Lipikaar Firefox extension is for you!

Whatever be the tool you use, Lipikaar gives you the ability to type in Devanagari, Bengali, Kannada, Punjabi, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Arabic and Urdu. Using Devanagari alone implies you can now type for Hindi, Marathi, Konkani, Nepali, Kashmiri and Sindhi.

Lipikaar works on the simple idea that pressing the phonetically nearest English keyboard character to the character in your favorite language, should result in that desired character. Pressing the same key again, should result in the next nearest, and so on.

For example, in Hindi, 'l' would mean ल, 'i' would result in ि and so on. Thus to get लिपिकार we just follow the keyboard sequence, l-i-p-i-k-a-r. It is as simple as that. And more over, repeatedly pressing a key to get more characters associated with that key, is a feature all of us SMS and mobile users are familiar with, thus making Lipikaar one of the most user friendly typing tools available.

So what is everybody waiting for? You want to express yourself, you've now got more power than ever before. Go ahead..make your opinion count!