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!