Google Indic keyboard allows for search in 14 Indian languages

Posted on August 21, 2007 at 7:42 am

Google recently announced on August 15th, India’s Independence day, the release of Google Labs India, whereby they will showcase their favorite ideas for just Indian users. One of the first ideas released that day was the mission to make search accessible universally and hence offering search in Google in 14 Indian and South Asian languages through an on-screen keyboard.

The 14 languages supported include অসমীয়া (Assamese), বাংলা (Bengali), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), हिंदी (Hindi), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), मराठी (Marathi), नेपाली (Nepali), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (Punjabi), संस्कृतम् (Sanskrit), සිංහල (Sinhala), தமிழ் (Tamil), and తెలుగు (Telugu). All a person needs is a web browser, a mouse to click the letters, and a Unicode font as their language setting.

In order to use the new Indian search services, you can install the appropriate iGoogle gadget to your personalized Google homepage. By searching in using these gadgets, results will be presented in your own local language.

Here’s an example of the Hindi iGoogle gadget installed on my Google homepage. Performing a search brings up relevant results in Hindi and changes all the Google text to Hindi also.

Also, another Google India Labs project is taking the transliteration feature out of Blogger and making it a independent program that you can use to type or write in Hindi. It will allow you to type in Hindi using an English keyboard. Simply type out the words phonetically and Google will convert them into the correct Hindi word. For instance, if you type in “Bharat”, it will be translated to “भारत”! Amazing!

Begin typing words and hit the space key to have it translated.

You can also install this to your Google Personalized homepage by installing the iGoogle gadget. It’s great Google is coming up with so many ways to help Indians perform searches in local languages and write Hindi with ease.

Enjoy!

[tags]search in hindi, google search in indian languages, english to hindi, google indic search, google transliteration, google labs india[/tags]

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