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Google Transliteration with Brand New Look
Google has announced their transliteration service with a Rich WYSWYG editor. Currently it’s supporting major Indic languages such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and also it has support for Arabic.
HTML Support
New rich interface allows you to do most of the stuff you wanted to do in a word processor such as formatting, colouring etc. Also it lets you see the HTML code of the stuff you typed, which you can use for HTML web pages.
Google Dictionary
Google Dictionary also integrated with this site so you can easily search the meaning of words between languages. Most of the popular languages are supported in the Google Dictionary. Tamil, Hindi and most of the Indic languages supported in the dictionary but Google is yet to add support for Sinhala.
Insert Unicode Letters
You can insert Unicode letters with a simple mouse click. As I said above most of the languages are supported including Sinhala and Tamil.
Google Transliteration is available in Blogger, Gmail, Knol, Orkut and as a bookmarklet. You can also enable it on your website using the transliteration API.
Text to Speech Engine for Tamil
Text to speech is a wonderful tool when it comes to accessibility issues. For a long time we had Text to speech in English and other European Languages but not for Tamil.
Today I come to know that there is a tool is being developed at MILE Lab’s. Now tool is still beta but it works fine. I typed some Tamil text like “அன்பே ஆறுயிரே” to my surprise the automated tool read it correctly.
It’s worth giving a try. Hope they’ll release API and all the stuff around it, so we can integrate such services in our websites where disabled people can make maximum use of it.
Try the tool at http://mile.ee.iisc.ernet.in:8080/tts_demo/
Now you can upload files to Google Translate
Google Translate added a new option to upload documents you want to translate. Now you can upload Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, HTML and text files to translate.
By the way, Google gives you following warning too.
Unfortunately, Google converts your documents to HTML and then it translates the HTML file, so the translation doesn’t preserve the layout or the embedded images. You can upload Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, HTML and text files.
This is not exciting news for Sri Lankans as we don’t have translator for both Tamil and Sinhalese. The only South Asian language to be listed in Google Translate is Hindi.
Hope someone will make translator in our local languages. I’m sure community will come to help when someone initiates the project. We can’t rely on Google for their support as they’ll have proprietary rights over their products.
Google Chrome is Now Available in Tamil
Good news for Tamil computer users. Google has released their Chrome browser with Tamil interface. Yipee!It’s available in Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya (on Windows Vista alone), Tamil, and Telugu. A Hindi version was available earlier.
Eearlier we had Firefox 2.X with Tamil Interface. It was localised by Thamizha community. Later, Firefox came up with version 3.0 but we didn’t have Tamil interface for it. During this time Firefox 3.0 was released with Sinhala interface.
Later University of Moratuwa worked on and come up with a Sri Lankan Tamil locale interface. Where you need to install English interface, later on top of it you can install the Tamil interface.
Now we have Firefox 3.5 with Tamil interface, but still it’s a Release candidate. So it may be an unstable product.
Now it seems Google has released the browser for most of the major Indian languages including Tamil.
Important part of the help pages of Google Chrome also have been translated into Tamil. But unfortunately they’ve used, Taminglish (Tamilised English words) for some vocabulary. This is often a criticism raised against Google’s translations.
You can grab a copy of your Google Chrome Tamil from Chrome website.
Tamil Spell Checker for Firefox
Good news for Tamil Firefox users. A new version of Tamil Spell checker is available in Firefox. More than 50,000 words have been included with the help of Tamil Wikipedia.
I’ve been using it and its comparatively doing a good job but we need to have some decision machine attached to this spell checker to suggest spellings.
Hats off to Balachander Muruganandam, for initiating this project. He is a known blogger in blogosphere and has developed so much of Gadgets and tools in Tamil.
You can download Firefox Tamil Spell Checker from Firefox website.
Gmail allows you to type in Tamil
Long time back Google has introduced transliteration (NOT translation) for five indian languages including Tamil and Hindi. Later they integrated this feature to many of their products such as Blogger, Orkut, iGoogle etc.
Advantage of transliteration is you don’t have to learn any keyboard layout. If you type “namaste” transliterate service will transliterate this to “नमस्ते.” Similarly, “vanakkam” in Tamil will become “வணக்கம்.”
Though it’s a wonderful feature if you continue to use this you’ll get addicted to this service and will not be able to continue with normal typing layout. Therefore use is when there is no other way to type in Tamil.
Now Google has integrated Transliteration in Gmail too. It’s so good that we can directly type in Tamil, especially when we are in Net café or office.
To enable this feature go to settings. (See the image below)
Airtel limits the unlimited broadband with FUP
Airtel mobile broadband is stirring some interest among us and we have started to think of migrating from Dialog mobile broadband to Airtel Mobile broadband. Some people have gone one step ahead and unlocked HSPA modem which is locked by Dialog.
Today Indians are screaming that Airtel has introduced Fair user policy and they’ve cut down the speed by 50%. Oh Shit…! Yeah traitors!
Now most of the Airtel broadband users have to be careful at anytime Sri Lankan Airtel can also impose the same rule out in Sri Lanka. Applying Fair user policy and cutting the speed down. On top of all Airtel has come up with a document about FUP. 
I have decided to push back my plans of migrating to Airtel. We’ll wait and see what these Airtel people are up to.
Windows Live Messenger in Tamil
I went to download live messenger to chat with my friends and found out the Live messenger is available in
Live Messenger in Tamil
Tamil too. You can select Tamil as language in right hand side drop down list and download it from Live messenger site. Along with Live messenger, other programs such as mail, writer also coming in Tamil.
Once you started the installation it’ll proceed as shown in the figure.
You can also check out their FAQ section also in Tamil.
I thought yahoo will release Tamil messenger first but apparently its Microsoft who taken the lead on localization. Happy to see most of online products are getting localized into Tamil. I can give you several examples such as Tamil WordPress, Google products such as Gmail, Google Docs, Orkut, and Facebook etc.
Hope to see more wide presence of Tamil in virtual world in near future.
Google’s Voice Recognition in Hindi & Telugu
Now Google is offering Voice Search in Hindi and Telugu. According to Google it’s a pilot service and they are working on it to improve.
It is Google’s new experimental service making local business information, movie show times and real time flight status available from any phone for free. You get fast access to the same information you would find on Google.com and Google Local Search when you are on the go, anytime, for free.
It is free. 1-800-41-999-999 is a toll free number and it does not cost you anything. Google doesn’t charge you for the information. The service may not be available from payphones, but is available from any mobile phone and land-line in Hyderabad and Delhi.
NHM Writer – Indic Unicode Writer
NHM writer is one of the most famous Tamil Unicode writers. It lets you type in Unicode Tamil format, which is a globally recognized encodings.
Recently NHM writer released their new version with support to several languages such as ssamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil & Telugu.
I prefer NHM writer over Keyman for Three reasons.
- It’s really a small software and less than 1 MB
- It supports 5 layouts (including Tamil 99 and Bamini)
- It enables Regional Language support in Control panel without Win XP CD. Read more
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