How to type in Indian Languages
Quillpad is a free online Indian language typing tool. You can type in Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Nepali. For example, when you type ‘kannada ondu sundara bhashe’ in Kannada, Quillpad will convert it directly into Kannada script. If you write a word like ‘vishesha’, first sh should become ‘?’ and the second sh should become ‘?’. Quillpad will intelligently do that for you. No need to use shift keys or to memorize any key mappings. So ‘??????????’ can be written by typing ‘rashtrapati’ or ‘raashtrapathi’. Quillpad can also predict if multiple words are possible for your input. You can click on the word to select from those options. In addition Quillpad allows you to type English words freely in between Kannada words. It intelligently transliterates them into Kannada.
Go to quillpad web site to see the demo and enjoy typing and sending messages in your native languages
Email in Indian Languages
My family members and friends who prefer to communicate in Kannada, Hindi Malyalam did not have an easy way to type and send email in their language of choice. I am very happy to announce the launch of a new feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type email in Indian languages.
When you compose a new mail in Gmail, you should now see an icon with an Indian character, as the screenshot below shows. This feature is enabled by default for Gmail users in India. If you do not see this function enabled by default, you will need to go the “Settings” page and enable this option in the “Language” section.
When you click the Indian languages icon, you can type words the way they sound in English and Gmail will automatically convert the word to its Indian local language equivalent. For example, if a Hindi speaker types “namaste” we will transliterate this to “??????.” Similarly, “vanakkam” in Tamil will become “???????” Google currently support five Indian languages – Hindi, Kannada, Malyalam, Tamil and Telugu — and you can select the language of your choice from the drop-down menu list next to the icon.
Google built this new feature using Google’s transliteration technology, which is also available on Google India Labs, Orkut, Blogger and iGoogle. I hope you find this feature useful to communicate with those of your friends and family who prefer to write in their native language, and it will be available soon to businesses and schools using Google Apps.