Dated, September 21, 2007
The Financial Express

Web search in Indian languages is slated to become faster, thanks to an initiative by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). The first such search to be rolled out will be in Hindi.

Mahesh Kulkarni, programme coordinator of Graphics and Intelligence-based Script Technology (GIST) of C-DAC, said, "C-DAC has tied up with two international search engines, which will display the plug-ins on their page." GIST has been developed to facilitate the use of Indian languages on the Net. C-DAC is also coming up with a spell check software for Indian languages.

"Urdu spell check, which has been developed with the help of linguists, will be launched next month. Like Urdu, Sindhi and a few other languages have to be spell checked from right to left. This is difficult as we have to programme it differently. However, grammar and writing pattern for most Indian languages is the same," he added.

In the area of domain names, websites having content in Indian languages have to be registered in English. But C-DAC is working on the technology and the software, and is standardising a procedure to register a web name in Indian languages.