Hindi on the Web

Now Internet URLs enitrely in your own language

2009-10-30T23:00:00.000+05:30

Moving away from Latin characters, Internationalized domain names (IDN) or the address that internet users type in the URL can soon be typed entirely in your own language (including the TLD). As result of the initiative by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and C-DAC, by June 2010, typing domain name, like hindionweb.blogspot.com, in any of the 22 Indian language will become a reality.

Initially, it will be available for only new websites with dot in IDNs. A few government domain names such as pradhanmantri.in or bharat.in have been reserved. Despite of this welcome move there are several issues that still need to be resolved, especially issues arising out of the complexity of Indian scripts (for example: how do you distinguish between URLs types in Marathi and Hindi, since both use Devanagari script).

Cisco to localize its router software

2009-09-09T10:00:00.000+05:30

Image via CrunchBase

In an interview with Digit magazine, Eskild Hansen, Head of the European Design Centre at Cisco told them what the latter thought of the Indian market in terms of Internet and Wi-Fi usage, as well as what Cisco's plans were for customised content. "India has close to one billion people, so there are a huge number of people who can use the Internet," Hansen said. "Currently, there is no support for Hindi (in our router software), but we are trying to localise it as much as possible."

Lawyers campaign to argue cases in Hindi

2009-09-06T16:21:00.001+05:30

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A group of lawyers have started a signature campaign in Delhi High Court and the five district courts of the capital, requesting that they be allowed to argue their cases in Hindi also apart from the English language now used. "We have received a huge response from the lawyers and collected over 3,000 signatures so far to support our campaign," said Ashok Aggarwal, president of the Delhi unit of the lawyers’ association.

"When lawyers argue in Hindi, judges do not pay attention to them and English has become a status symbol," Aggarwal said. Moreover, Article 348 of the constitution provides for arguing court cases in English as well as regional languages, Aggarwal pointed out.

Hindi is being used in the high courts of Rajasthan, Allahabad and Madhya Pradesh, but not in the national capital, according to the lawyers’ union. (Source: IANS)

Indic language script usage growing on Orkut

2009-09-02T22:45:00.001+05:30

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Medianama interviewed Rahul Kulkarni, a Product Manager at Google India about the newly launched Orkut Zeitgeist. Following were his comments about the growth of use of Indian language scripts on Orkut:

"...we are seeing combination of Hindi-English, Malayalam-English or Kannada-English, Marathi-English. Its difficult to mine or understand this data because in India it is varied - we are talking 26 languages in combination with English...The vast majority (of users) is still in English script, though Indic language is growing, after transliteration was introduced. We see more communities using it. One such is the Hindi poetry community. (Source: Medianama)"

The growth is a welcome change, especially given the fact that Orkut is predominantly student driven in India. As for the "Poetry community" we would rather keep mum ;) Haven't Hindi bloggers tolerated them enough already?

Write in Hindi, Read in Punjabi

2009-08-22T00:52:00.003+05:30

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Vishal Goyal, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, Punjabi University, Patiala who is doing Ph.D. under the guidance of Dr. Gurpreet Singh Lehal, Professor, Department of Computer Science has developed a web based machine translation system which can convert text input in Hindi into Punjabi after translation. You may also translate complete Hindi webpages by specifying the URL, though the processing is annoyingly slow at the moment. [Source: Punjab Newsline Network]

Editor's note: ~~We found that presently the system only accepts input text typed using Krutidev, a popular True type font in Hindi, and doesn't work with Unicode.~~ Vishal clarified in his comment that the tool works with Unicode.

Dunia Dekho: A Travel Portal in Hindi

2009-08-18T01:05:00.002+05:30

Ghaziabad based digital media company ADS Media has launched a Travel Portal "Dunia Dekho" entirely in Hindi, which they claim is the first such website in the language.Website's editor Arjun Deshpremi believes that the portal would be an excellent resource for Hindi speaking tourists from around the World. The website would also include news items related to the tourism industry and would allow readers to upload their travel anecdotes along with pictures. [Source: Prabhatkhabar]

Kalkion.com launches Hindi Science Fiction website

2009-08-16T01:16:00.000+05:30

Noida based Kalkion Group has today launched the Hindi edition of Kalkion.com, a multi-lingual and multi-cultural science fiction and fantasy web magazine. It claims to be the world's first science fiction website in Hindi. The site will publish science fiction stories, fantasies, articles, interviews, news and blogs.

Kalkion was launched on April 15th 2009 and their editorial board is contemplating launch of other multi-lingual editions of Kalkion. The inaugural issue includes an interview of Dr Rajeev Ranjan Upadhyaya along-with several SF stories.

Nepalese MP demands second national language status for Hindi

2009-08-07T01:25:00.000+05:30

A Nepalese lawmaker and leader of a Madhesi party has demanded that Hindi, which had played a vital role in unifying Nepal, should be given recognition as the second national language in the country's Constitution.
Rameshwor Roy Yadav, general secretary of the Madhesi People's Rights Party (Democratic) said Hindi had played a vital role in unifying Nepal as it was a contact language among people speaking different mother tongues. He demanded that Hindi be given recognition as the second national language in the Nepalese Constitution.
Speaking on "the present and future of Hindi language in Nepal" at a programme here, Mr. Roy recalled how he was kicked out of Parliament nine times in 1991 for speaking in Hindi. He said a marshal was asked to take him out of the Parliament repeatedly for speaking in Hindi, he said, adding the incident was also raised in the Indian Parliament. "After that pressure was created upon Nepal government and finally the Chairman of the Upper House or National Assembly Beni Bahadur Karki allowed me to speak in Hindi in the Parliament," he said.
Referring to the controversy that erupted after Vice President Parmananda Jha took the oath of office in Hindi, he said: "when the use of the language was allowed in the parliament then why (Mr. Jha) couldn't take oath of office and secrecy in Hindi". [PTI]

Google Transliteration now Available in Urdu and Punjabi

2009-07-31T01:47:00.000+05:30

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"Urdu brought with it some unique challenges: since it is written right to left, we needed to ensure that editing functions such as backspace, tab, etc all work as expected. Urdu diacriticals, or 'Aerabs', also needed special attention as they map the vowel sounds but are not necessarily visible in the word. For Punjabi, the 'addak', 'tippi' and 'bindi' posed its own challenge as they change the intonation of the previous character. "[Read details at Google blog]

Hindi catches on in Amrikan schools

2009-07-14T01:44:00.002+05:30

Uncle Sam is generously funding US schools to teach students foreign languages deemed vital to its economy and national security. First, it was Chinese and Arabic, and now there is a great effort to teach Hindi. The demand for Hindi teachers and course material has snowballed. Top US universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania offer Hindi. [Read full news at DNA]

IPLKhabar: New Hindi website on IPL

2009-04-10T17:37:00.000+05:30

With 8 days to go to IPL-2 Hindi blogger Pratik Pandey has launched a new Hindi website IPLKhabar that provides match timetable, team and player profiles, news and tidbits in Hindi. (A related news about another Hindi IPL website is here.)

Lok Sabha website now in Hindi too

2009-01-08T05:53:00.000+05:30

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee launched the Hindi website of the lower house on 7 Jan 2008. Addressing the launching ceremony at Parliament Library Building, the speaker said the launch of the Hindi website would be beneficial for MPs and the Lok Sabha secretariat. "The Hindi website will help bring parliament nearer to the people," Chatterjee said.

Appreciating the efforts of the officials of the secretariat and National Informatics Centre for launching the website, Chatterjee said: ‘One will be able to access the information on parliamentary activities online in Hindi.’ Lok Sabha Secretary General P.D.T. Achary said: "Now, members will be able to access the information on parliamentary activities online in Hindi as well, thereby helping them discharge their parliamentary tasks more quickly and effectively."

The English website of Lok Sabha exists at http://loksabha.nic.in and the new Hindi website is at http://164.100.24.207/loksabha_hindi/loksabha.htm (link also available from the English website).

Firefox in Hindi, its finally here

2008-09-25T01:30:00.000+05:30

Firefox has finally been able to mend its mistake of dumping Hindi in its major release 3.0. Firefox Hindi is now available (also, Marathi, Bengali and Telugu). Its still in beta. This release also contains a lot of fixes. You may download 3.0.3 here. [via]

Chandamama launches online editions in Indian languages

2008-07-08T15:53:00.000+05:30

Popular children's magazine Chandamama is now available online in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil (Marathi & Oriya are coming up). The sites use Unicode and are very elegantly designed. It seems the group is also trying to bring previous print issue online however they pertain for the duration 1947 to 1965.

Chandamama was the brainchild of filmmakers B Nagi Reddi and his friend Chakrapani who edited the magazine. Chandamama has been a popular source of Indian folklore, mythology and history in the form of stories. Since 1975 Nagi Reddi's son Vishwanath edits the magazine.

The online portal comes in the wake of Chandamama being recently acquired by Mumbai based Geodesic, known for its IM system Mundu. On the anvil are the plans to produce films, video and interactive books and CDs based on the magazines. [News source]

Amidst fanfare, Firefox-3 dumps Hindi

2008-06-25T15:47:00.000+05:30

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There has been much hullabaloo about the release of Mozilla Firefox 3, but sadly Hindi has been left out of the 46 different languages the popular browser was released in. In a blog post at Lingo24 the author rightly wonders about the exclusion of Hindi when some other Indian languages such as Punjabi and Gujarati were accommodated. The blog quotes a Mozilla spokesman putting the onus on the local volunteers. Hindi language packs, Mozilla said, needed further development. A popular Hindi blogger however recently attributed the issue to the nitpick from the peer group that has had problems with the Hindi localization team. Well such spats are not uncommon in the open source world but it seems Hindi lovers will have to wait longer till the strings are tightened.

Update: Ravi followed up on his comment made on this post, in a blog post (Hindi) and informed that DNA had also raised this issue. All in all, the newspaper report implies that the language volunteers were not motivated enough though "Mozilla admits that compared to other regions, its growth has lagged in India". Mozilla spokesperson Chris Hofmann clarified Mozilla's stand, as follows:

"...talks about motivation is definitely a misquote, it is unfortunate, and I apologies to for any misunderstanding. The question from the reporter was "Why doesn't Mozilla ship Hindi?", and the response was to say that we have worked to 46 different locale teams to get them shipping simultaneously with Firefox 3. We also talked about addons.mozilla.org which host other locales that are in development and some of which should be shipping soon. Our PR folks will follow up with the reporter to clear the misunderstanding around any lack of motivation that was implied in the article which is definitely not true, and the fact that we are very excited about the possibility of Hindi and other Indic languages shipping soon."

Yojana now available online too

2008-06-16T01:12:00.000+05:30

Yojana, a premier monthly published by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, is now available online at its own website http://www.yojana.gov.in. It’s commendable that the government realized that the publication, one of the best sources of meaningful discussion on socio-economic issues and government developmental policies, should be made available to the young people who are increasingly using the Internet. More commendable is the fact that the website is made available in 12 Indian languages Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Assamese, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati, Urdu, Kannada, Punjabi and Oriya apart from English.

The good looking website will be a boon for research scholars & students who for years have been following the print publication for various competitive examinations. Yojana is also working on digitization of its entire archives spanning to 51 years of its publication. [Source]

Breaking News: Google adds Hindi to its translation service

2008-05-02T16:32:00.000+05:30

At last Hindi has made it to Google's machine translation service that allows you to translate chunk of text or entire web pages from English to Hindi and vice-versa. It comes with another nice service that translates English Search strings in to Hindi and performs a Google search for you. Both the services are still very rusty and still distant from being usable at the moment. But it is a great start and Google deserves a pat on the back for this initiative which will surely boost use of Hindi on the web. More commendable is Google's willingness to improve this service, so if you find the translation poor or awry you can provide your suggestions right there. [Via]

Update: Almost a fortnight after we broke the story, Google official blog has the details on the new feature. Remember, you read the news first here :)

Josh18 introduces Live Cricket Scorecards in Hindi

2008-04-23T14:29:00.000+05:30

Hindi Portal Josh18.com has announced the launch of 'Live Cricket Scorecards' in Hindi, probably the first such feature on the Internet. This Live Cricket Scorecard is available on the 'Cricket section'. India has more than 40-million internet users and PC literacy in India has shown a steady YoY growth of more than 40% since 2004. Youth from Tier-2 and 3 cities and towns are increasingly logging on to the internet. [Read the full story]

Speak Hindi to browse web on your phone

2008-04-23T14:20:00.000+05:30

Researchers at IBM's lab in New Delhi have created a pilot program called "Spoken Web" that lets speakers of Hindi surf the Internet using their voice. The feature is targeted at people who are unable to access web through mobile phones. IBM estimates that 1 billion people will surf the Internet on phones by 2011. The company plans to complete the test project in India within three months and have the application rolled out in the country by the end of 2008. [Read the full story]

Multilingual dictionary on 7 Indian languages soon

2008-04-22T16:34:00.000+05:30

Madras university will soon bring out a multilingual dictionary on seven Indian languages to promote cross-cultural relations. The dictionary is aimed at making languages from the south more accessible in other parts of the country. The Multi-Lingual Dictionary of Indian Languages Project funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC) is a joint venture by the seven language departments of the Oriental Research Institute (ORI), one of the university's premier wings. The five-volume dictionary will comprehensively cover language and literature, art and culture, science and technology, administration and law, and, flora and fauna. [Read the full story]

IPL Cricket Website in Hindi

2008-04-18T18:13:00.000+05:30

Noida based Mediaguru has released a new bilingual cricket website to bring the latest news on IPL 2008. The site is in English and Hindi. This probably the first such website in Hindi.

Penguin Indian goes to Britain

2008-04-15T19:32:00.000+05:30

Penguin India is to launch its 2,000-strong back list into the UK and Europe via Gardners, targeting the UK's Indian population as well as those with an interest in India. An initial 100 titles are to be exported, most of which are English language titles, though a handful will be in the Indian languages of Hindi, Marathi and Urdu. The launch titles will cover fiction, non-fiction and children's apart from other favorites like the Penguin Hindi-English English-Hindi Dictionary and Thesaurus by Arvind Kumar and Kusum Kumar. [Source]

IDNs may debut in early 2009

2008-04-14T17:05:00.000+05:30

Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia and a member of ICANN working groups believes that Internationalized domain names (IDNs) may debut early next year. He pointed out that the launch of IDNs does not just revolve around technical issues, "It's also a lot to do with policies or even politics...there are many of these issues in different languages to deal with as well and that's why it's taking so long." Chung added that DotAsia intends to provide multilingual domain names, including Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean and Thai. For example, the "asia" in ".asia" would not be the English term but the Chinese equivalent, in Chinese characters. [Read full Story]

Advani's autobiography in Hindi soon

2008-04-09T18:28:00.000+05:30

NDA’s prime minister-in-waiting LK Advani's autobiography "My Country My Life" is doing very well and the publishers say that a Hindi translation of the book is slated to come out in May, 2008. [Source]

Update: You can get a glimpse of the upcoming Hindi edition of the book (titled "Mera desh, mera jeevan") at the official website of the autobiography. The website features book excerpt, reviews etc.

Free texbooks from NCERT, on web

2008-04-07T21:05:00.000+05:30

Image from WikipediaStian, who blogs on education, was delighted to find free course ware of NCERT on the web in English, Hindi and Urdu. The material is available in PDF format. Stian opines :

There are all kinds of reasons to applaud this. As a student of Hindi, I love reading the readers made for the initial grades (with beautiful illustrations!), and as I move up, I can use the texts in parallel, reading the Hindi and checking with the English that I understood. Just like I suggested that the huge amount of Open Course Ware films of classroom lectures from all around the world, especially China and India, might be a gigantic boon to a comparative curriculum researcher, these text books would also be great for someone studying curriculum and pedagogics in India.