Google Labs Releases Gadgets For Search In 14 Indic Languages
Google Labs India has released keyboards that allow searching in several Indic languages, including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil and Telugu, writes Ankit Solanki. It appears that the gadget can only be added to the iGoogle page…and that’s a pity cause it would be great for Indic language blogs to add the search tool. Ditto for the Hindi transliteration tool, a gadget form of the transliteration feature that Google had added to Blogger.
I tried both the Hindi transliteration gadget and the keyboard on my iGoogle page – it’s far too tedious to type using that keyboard, though for those unfamiliar with English, this is a boon. But actually expecting people to install the keyboard on their iGoogle page is asking for too much – I think Google would be better off adding the keyboard as a default option for local language search: a Hindi keyboard when you visit the Hindi search page, and ditto for other languages…similar to what Raftaar has done.
Well not a google grade application by any strech of imagination . its just an implementation of look up table . no good . i will stick to KeyTrans
[ http://www.t6india.com/keytrans/index.htm ] from Tensorlabs.
they have a decent integration with Gmail through their FireFox pluggin.
this tool from google can be a killer if they implement look up table in a Predictive Pref etching faction while user is type int .
like they do in T9 Dictionary in mobile or like they do in Google Suggest . till than i don't see this is a big deal .
Hmm… I looked at KeyTrans (not the Firefox plugin, just the page you linked to, and please correct me if I've missed something) and it does not work well at all. For one thing, you can't correct a mistake — Google's service gives you suggestions for alternate words that match your English input and provides a nice interface for manually spelling the word if none of the alternates are correct.
Transliteration is not a *new* technology — even my trusty Emacs has an Indic transliteration mode, but I can never get it working. Google's service seems to me the easiest to use, for now.
Ankit
i rechecked the link , its working for IE and Firefox . As far as correcting a mistake is concerned , you need to alter the English text in upper frame and change will reflect in frame for translated text .
Prashant: That's the thing — you need to keep guessing what English text will provide the right Hindi output. With Google, if it's wrong, you get a list of other similar Hindi words, which is much more user-friendly.