In India, there is a large amount of content in English but not in Indian languages. Hence, there is a large unreserved need. The conditions are most conducive for the use and proliferation of language technology for Indian languages. There are a large number of users with digital devices (smart phones etc.), who wish to get information in their own languages as they do not know English.

Indian language technology can enable people to access material in their own languages, for example, material in English and other Indian languages can be translated automatically. Similarly, computers can read out information to the illiterate or the blind through text-to-speech systems, remote data can become accessible through telephonic speech interfaces, sophisticated search can be provided to the internet, digitally scanned books and other material can be made more accessible by using optical character readers.

Technology Areas :

Here are the Indian language technology areas and example tasks in each of them.

1. Localization

• Availability of Indian language support on all electronic devices
• Use of standards

2. Creating e-content in Indian languages

• Creating by original writing
• Creating through translation

3. Automatic machine translation

• English to/from Indian languages (ILs)
• Among Indian languages

4. Cross language access to content

• Cross lingual search (information retrieval) across Indian languages as well as English

5. Speech processing

• Text-to-speech (TTS) for ILs (e.g., machine reading out text in a language)
• Speech –to-text (ASR) for ILs (e.g., interacting with computers through telephone)

6. Optical character recognition

• Optical character recognition (OCR) for ILs (e.g., converting scanned images of pages to text)
• Online handwriting recognition (OHWR) for ILs (e.g. stylus based input to mobile devices)

Localization:

Localization in our context means that the electronic device is enabled with Indian languages using the standards.  Use of standards is most important. This ensures that the data created on one device is usable (displayable, editable, processable, etc.) on any other electronic device.

Creating e-Content in Indian Languages:

While e-content is not a replacement for books, the young generation has started placing increasing reliance on the content available over the internet. In India, where a large number of people know an Indian language but not English, it is even more important to create large amount of e-content in all Indian languages.

The example of Germany: It was observed in Germany, not so long ago (around the year 2000), that the German youth were accessing English language content much more than the German language content. It was realized that this situation had arisen because there was not sufficient content in German on the internet. Through a national effort, a large amount of German content was put on the internet, and the young generations switched back to German content.

Automatic Machine Translation (MT):

 Automatic machine translation (MT) translates a given text in one language to another, instantly. While the quality of translation produced varies depending on the distance between the language pairs, and the technology used, it provides instant access to text in another language to the user. MT systems for Indian languages are available and produce good quality translation. They compare favourably with similar systems across European languages, for example. However, effort needs to be put in deploying them and making them available to users, both general users as well as publication houses. Deployment of systems for the language pairs which are ready, can take place within a year.

Cross Language Access to Content:

As the e-content in Indian languages increases, there would be an even greater need to search for and locate relevant content by the users on the internet. Here, it would be that the content is getting created for Indian languages, because large amount of content might not be available in all Indian languages initially. Technology is available for this task across half a dozen Indian Languages. However, indexing of content in the languages (crawling) needs to be done. More languages also need to be added.

Speech Processing:

There are two parts to this technology: Text-to-speech (TTS), and Speech-to-text (ASR) systems. The

former technology allows a computer to “read out” a given text file in an IL. The latter allows the computer to “listen” to the spoken language and convert it into a text file.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR):

There are two technology areas under this head: Optical character recognition (OCR), and Online hand writing recognition (OHWR). OCR takes a printed book and converts it into text form. When scanning of a book in hardcopy is done, the output is in the form of scanned images which cannot be used for search, machine translation, speech processing etc. OCR takes a scanned image of a page, recognizes the characters, and converts it into text form.

 Way forward:

Several things need to be done. For example, the Indian language technology should immediately be deployed to translate all central government websites into 22 Indian languages. This will generate a demand which will help growth of an eco-system of academic institutions as researchers and technology developers, start-ups as technology maintainers and others who service the demand using MT technology.

Conclusion:

The conditions are most conducive for the use and proliferation of language technology for Indian languages. There are a large number of users with digital devices (smart phones etc.), who wish to get information in their own languages as they do not know English. There is a large amount of content in English but not in Indian languages. Hence, there is a large unreserved need!

TID-BITS:

 Digital Signature:

Digital Signature or eSign is an online electronic signature service. Is a part of the Government of India’s flagship programme- ‘Digital India’ which is aimed at transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. The objective of eSign service is to offer on-line service to citizens for instant signing of their documents securely in a legally acceptable form.

Benefits of e-Sign Service :

1. Secure online service

eSign services are offered by trusted third party service provider, like Certifying Authorities (CA) licensed as per the IT Act under the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA). C-DAC plays the role of CA and has placed necessary security measures to ensure security of the whole signing process.

2. No Physical verification required

Unlike the case of traditional CA that requires verification process by a personal visit which causes inconvenience, eSign provides ease of service on-line based on Aadhaar based e-Authentication.

3. No need of Hardware tokens

eSign is an online service and with this, traditional hardware-tokens are not required anymore.

4. Multiple ways to authenticate

eSign service provides authentication based on multiple ways such as One-Time-Password (OTP, received through registered mobile in Aadhaar database) or Biometric (fingerprint or iris-scan). Presently enabled for OTP based authentication.

5. Privacy is preserved

eSign service ensure the privacy of the signer by just requiring the hash of the document instead of the complete document.

The IT Act also provides for the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA) to license and regulate the working of Certifying Authorities. The Certifying Authorities (CAS) issue digital signature certificates for electronic authentication of users.