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| Now, What You Hear Is What You Type | | Simplifying regional language computing in India | | India as a nation can take great pride in being able to communicate seamlessly in 18 different languages. In such a diverse environment, development and progress of a nation largely depends on communicating knowledge seamlessly. This realization is not new.
The process of localization governing regional language computing and business communication has been hindered due to several known causes. Information Technology has been working to reduce these knowledge and communication gaps across different linguistic groups encompassing over 95% of India's population that is not English-literate. It is, therefore, necessary that people should be able to use computers and other IT systems in there own languages and derive benefits of enhanced productivity and better quality of life.
Unfortunately, the development of computers took place in the West, mainly in the USA, and hence we got computers, which were ready for typing in English or other languages, which use the Roman script. Thankfully, technology is helping overcome the language barrier which is crucial to prevent the digital divide. Lately, few companies have been working to adapt the computer to our languages by writing software so that the same English keyboard could generate the alphabets of our choice.
As Indian "aksharas" are far higher in number, the process of reproducing the combined symbols in Indian scripts and languages on a computer screen is more complicated. And this is where the use of the keyboard for entering regional language data becomes considerably more complex for the user. Also, different keyboard layouts in existence give rise to typing difficulties for the user.
Keyboard layouts typically focus on optimal use of the usual 101 keys "QWERTY" keyboard or suggest different keyboards altogether which are designed specifically for typing in Indian languages. Both approaches require users to re-learn a new set of typing rules that are significantly different from the way English is typed. As a result, there is a drop in the familiarity with the keyboard layout and results in users needing additional typing training.
More recently, a new approach of text entry in Indian languages has become more popular. Simply put, the user can now type out the sounds of the Indian language word on the English letters and the software will display the phonetic equivalent of the word rendered in the Indian language script. For instance, it is very funny as to why a person should be learning to type both in English and Tamil. The same keyboard could be phonetically used to express both the languages.
To illustrate, in a phonetic keyboard, to render the name "rajesh" in any Indian language, the user will need to type r-a-a-j-e-s-h as it sounds. The basis of this capacity is another underlying technology, "Transliteration", which renders a word typed in any language in any other language as long as the character sets (letters and alphabets) of the two languages are very similar.
The benefits of this approach are manifold. Users can be up and running with multilingual text editors in almost no time. Typing speeds can increase dramatically within a few hours of trial and error in such scenarios. Secondly, this approach is more or less identical in all commercial uses of multilingual applications - hence, typing on a new computer or in different software will not require extensive learning. Third, users who are learning how to use English keyboards in the first place will find moving to this form of data entry a simpler task as it needs only rudimentary knowledge of the English alphabet set. Fourth, since this facility is primarily software driven, the need for investments in specialized hardware is done away with almost in its entirety. Also, this software governed facility can be switched on or off simply through software configuration, leaving the computer free to operate using the English keyboard in the normal English language mode.
Encouraged by the obvious advantages of this facility, several major software developers have adopted this keyboard and text entry method as the actual data entry mode. Microsoft Windows XP provides support for language modules that support phonetic text entry along with language-specific data entry keyboard layouts. Bangalore based Tally Solutions has recently launched its new concurrent multilingual accounts and inventory management software, Tally 8.1, with extensive support for phonetic data entry. By a combination of the phonetic data and transliteration abilities, users can maintain their accounts in Hindi, view it in Gujarati and print documents in Bengali if needed, all out of the same data set.
The benefit to the user of this technology has gone beyond transliteration capacities and it enables them to experience multilingual interface to the software in all major Indian languages. As a result, a very complete localization experience is created through which the user of the software can operate the application in his/her preferred language, maintain information in language of choice and share the same information with other indirect users of the information keeping their respective personal language preferences in mind.
This level of concurrent multilingual experience ensures that the beneficiaries from the increased comfort of regional language use range from business men, individuals, NGO's operating in developing markets, Government agencies and public utilities at large.
Courtsey: Tally Solutions |
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