Google launches local language tool for users in India
Google Inc. launched Google
Labs India, a version of its Google Labs platform that includes technologies to
allow people in India to conduct searches and get results in their local
languages, according to a Google blog post.
Google
Labs is the company's "technology playground" and a
showcase for some of its ideas under development.
The
engineers said they are testing two technologies on Google Labs India, an Indic
On-Screen Keyboard iGoogle Gadget and Google Indic Transliteration. Users can
search by choosing letters from the on-screen keyboard using a mouse. They can
add the gadget for their chosen language to their personalized iGoogle home pages
and use it to search for content in their languages, according to the blog.
The Google
Indic Transliteration tool allows users to type in Hindi by first typing the
words out phonetically on an English keyboard, which Google will then convert
to the correct Hindi word.
The content
created can be used in e-mail, word processors and other applications from both
Google and its competitors. The technology will help increase the amount of
content available online in Hindi, according to Google. Hindi transliteration
was launched earlier this year on Google's Blogger, a service for bloggers.
A number of
multinational companies are working on technologies that will make computer and
Internet access easier for people in India who are more at ease with local
languages. IBM, for example, announced earlier this month that it has developed
speech recognition software that will allow people speaking Hindi to create
e-mail and documents on computers and also to operate ATMs and interactive
voice response systems.
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