the world is not flat

8/8/2019 The World is Not Flat

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The World is Not FlatBuilding the Indian Language WebRahul Roy-Chowdhury and Anupama Dutta

October 18, 2008


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The Promise of the Indian Consumer Market

Fast growing economy

GDP (PPP): $3 trillion (4th largest)

GDP per capita: $2,700 (165th)

GDP Growth projected at 7.5% - 9% till 2025.

Growing Literacy, still mostly in local languages

650 million literate people in India

80 million English-literate in India (50% of them are online)

English education is growing fast, but from a small base

200 million newspaper readers in India (10% English)

Sources: India Census 2006; National Readership Survey 2006; McKinsey Global Institute


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But India is Not Online.

Mobile Phones: 270 million (5% with data plans)

Internet users: 40 50 million

Broadband connections: 4 million

Growth rate low (17% - 20%)

Sources: India Census 2006; National Readership Survey 2006; McKinsey Global Institute


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Barriers To Adoption: Access

Non-standard, cumbersome input mechanisms.

Lack of voice-based access for non-literate population.

Lack of physical access points


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Barriers To Adoption: Content

Current Indic content base is small and hard to search.

Ecosystem for content creation yet to be established.


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Barriers To Adoption: Applications

Communication applications not localized for Indic

speakers.

IR models cater to expert users; not novice users.


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Overcoming These Barriers

Access: Easier text entry on English keyboards

Content: Easier content creation in Indian Languages

Content: Automated translation to/from English

Applications: Build Indian language communities.

Googles Indic Language APIs can help!

Transliteration API : Enable transliteration ontextfields or use a low-level API.

Translation API : Automated machine translationbetween English and Hindi.


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Transliteration and Translation

Transliteration: Conversion of a word in one script to

its phonetic equivalent in another script

aap kaise hai? ?

shuru ho gayi mamu

Translation: Conversion of a word from one languageto another preserving the meaning

? How are you?


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Using Transliteration In Your Webpage

Allow users to add comments in an Indic language

Choose an Indic language

Type Indic words using transliteration

Choose alternate transliterations for a word

Intersperse English and Indic words in the comments

Transliteration API helps provide these functionalities


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4 Easy Steps To Enable Transliteration

Load the javascript and css

Create a transliteration control and specify options

Source and destination language

Default state of transliteration (on/off)

Shortcut key

Pass in ids of your textfields to the transliterationcontrol to make them transliteratable

(Optional) Show a visible control for users to toggletransliteration and change the language


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Transliteration API in 4 steps

Step 1: Load the Javascript and CSS

google.load("elements", "1", { packages: "transliteration" });


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Step 2: Create a transliteration control with specified options

var options = {sourceLanguage:google.elements.transliteration.LanguageCode.ENGLISH,destinationLanguage: google.elements.transliteration.LanguageCode.HINDI,shortcutKey: 'ctrl+g',transliterationEnabled: true};// Create an instance on TransliterationControlvar control = newgoogle.elements.transliteration.TransliterationControl(options);


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Step 3: Specify the textfield ids

// Enable transliteration in the textfieldsvar ids = [ "transl1", "transl2" ];control.makeTransliteratable(ids);

control.showControl('translControl', {

controlType:google.elements.transliteration.TransliterationControl.ControlType.SINGLE_LANGUAGE_BUTTON});

Step 4: Draw a visible control for users to toggle betweenEnglish and the Indic language.


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Transliteration API An Example

var options = {

sourceLanguage: 'en',destinationLanguage: 'hi',shortcutKey: 'ctrl+g',transliterationEnabled: true};var control = newgoogle.elements.transliteration.TransliterationControl(options);

control.showControl('translControl', { controlType:google.elements.transliteration.TransliterationControl.ControlType.MULTI_LANGUAGE_BUTTON });

control.makeTransliteratable(ids);


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Transliteration API - More Features

// Add a handler for the LANGUAGE_CHANGED eventtransliterationControl.addEventListener(google.elements.transliteration.TransliterationControl.EventType.LANGUAGE_CHANGED,

transliterateLanguageChangeHandler);

function transliterateLanguageChangeHandler(e) {// Alert the value of the new language

alert(You have chosen + e.destinationLanguage + as your language!);}

Aesthetics and user friendliness

Blend the visible control and menus into your webpage change the CSS!

Have a custom visible control which suits your webpageand have finer control over the feature.

addEventListener allows you to add handlers for specificevents transliteration turned on/off, language changed.


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Transliteration API Displaying Messages

Help the user use the feature

Detect supported configurations for the feature

google.elements.transliteration.isBrowserCompatible()

Detect font support on the users system

google.language.isFontRenderingSupported(hi)

Alert the user if network connection is not available

Use addEventListener hooks for theSERVER_UNREACHABLE event

Check if the language pair is supported for transliteration

google.elements.transliteration .isLanguagePairSupported

(en, hi);


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Low Level Transliteration API

If you dont want the UI elements, but need to use the

transliteration technology alone, use the low level API.

Pass English words in an array and get upto 5transliteration suggestions in the result.

google.language.transliterate(["Namaste"], "en", "hi",function(result) {if (!result.error) {var container =document.getElementById("transliteration");var res = result.transliterations;if(res && res.length > 0 &&

res[0].transliteratedWords.length > 0) {container.innerHTML = res[0].transliteratedWords[0];}}});


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Translation API

Allow users to translate content present on your

webpage and increase your userbase.

Translation API uses the technology that is usedbehind translate.google.com

Automatically detect the language of the sourcetext

Translate plain text or html

google.language.detect(text, function(result) {// result.language is the detected language of the text});

google.language.translate(Hello world, en, hi,function(result) {// result.translation has the translated text in Hindi.});


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Translation API An Example

// Detect the language of thesource text and translate it atthe same time.

google.language.translate(text,, en, handlerFunction);


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Links

http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/

http://www.google.co.in/transliterate/indic

http://translate.google.com

Thank you

Questions?


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