Global transliteration support
- From RSS
Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Product Manager
Most of us use the keyboard to enter text. This is one of the main actions that we perform on the computer. However, by no means for all languages keyboard input is a simple matter. If you've ever tried typing non-Latin text on a Latin keyboard, you know how difficult it can be. Many of us at Google’s office in the Indian city of Bangalore have come across this issue directly. In India, the use of the Latin keyboard is considered the norm, but it makes typing in national languages difficult. To solve this problem, we launched a service called Google Transliteration., which allows easy and convenient phonetic input using latin letters. Google Transliteration enables you to convert Latin letters to their corresponding phonetic equivalents in your language. Please note that in this case we are not talking about translating text; it is a conversion of words from one alphabet to another based on sound similarities. For example, if you type “hamesha”, it will be transliterated in Hindi as
“salaam” will be displayed in Farsi in the form 
, and typed in the English layout “spasibo” will become the Russian word thank you. Since the initial launch of the system, a huge work has been done to improve the quality of one of the languages of India, additional languages and new features have been added.
Today, we’re pleased to introduce the new, improved version of Google Transliteration. It is available through Google Labs or google.com/transliterate .
In the new version, you can choose any of the seventeen supported languages: Arabic , Bengali , Greek , Gujarati , Kannada , Malayalam , Marathi , Nepali , Punjabi , Russian , Sanskrit , Serbian , Tamil , Telugu , Urdu, Farsi and Hindi . You can also use the rich text formatting capabilities, as well as find word definitions in the built-in dictionaries. If the proposed option for transliteration did not suit you, you can highlight a word and see other options. To further enhance typing flexibility, we offer you a Unicode character selection bar .
Google Transliteration is integrated with a range of Google products . In addition, we offer you an API.-Interface and special bookmarklet applications that allow you to use Google Transliteration on other sites. The application that we originally created to solve the problem characteristic of India is now used in many other countries of the world. This is one example of how the power and scope of technology can help a person in the face of growing globalization.
Most of us use the keyboard to enter text. This is one of the main actions that we perform on the computer. However, by no means for all languages keyboard input is a simple matter. If you've ever tried typing non-Latin text on a Latin keyboard, you know how difficult it can be. Many of us at Google’s office in the Indian city of Bangalore have come across this issue directly. In India, the use of the Latin keyboard is considered the norm, but it makes typing in national languages difficult. To solve this problem, we launched a service called Google Transliteration., which allows easy and convenient phonetic input using latin letters. Google Transliteration enables you to convert Latin letters to their corresponding phonetic equivalents in your language. Please note that in this case we are not talking about translating text; it is a conversion of words from one alphabet to another based on sound similarities. For example, if you type “hamesha”, it will be transliterated in Hindi as
“salaam” will be displayed in Farsi in the form , and typed in the English layout “spasibo” will become the Russian word thank you. Since the initial launch of the system, a huge work has been done to improve the quality of one of the languages of India, additional languages and new features have been added.Today, we’re pleased to introduce the new, improved version of Google Transliteration. It is available through Google Labs or google.com/transliterate .
In the new version, you can choose any of the seventeen supported languages: Arabic , Bengali , Greek , Gujarati , Kannada , Malayalam , Marathi , Nepali , Punjabi , Russian , Sanskrit , Serbian , Tamil , Telugu , Urdu, Farsi and Hindi . You can also use the rich text formatting capabilities, as well as find word definitions in the built-in dictionaries. If the proposed option for transliteration did not suit you, you can highlight a word and see other options. To further enhance typing flexibility, we offer you a Unicode character selection bar .
Google Transliteration is integrated with a range of Google products . In addition, we offer you an API.-Interface and special bookmarklet applications that allow you to use Google Transliteration on other sites. The application that we originally created to solve the problem characteristic of India is now used in many other countries of the world. This is one example of how the power and scope of technology can help a person in the face of growing globalization.