October 12, 2006
SMS Text Messages In Non-Roman Alphabets
While English might be the de facto language in India, especially for business, and usually the first language taught in most schools there, Hindi is the official language. The script known as Devanagiri, and the language both derive from the dead language Sanskrit, which is a sister language of Latin.
The fact that Hindi is written in a non-Roman alphabet makes it complex to when it comes to computers and cell phones. However, Feedelix Wireless has managed to send the first-ever Hindi SMS message from a subscriber in India to another in San Diego, California. Feedelix's HindiVayuSMS software was used. [via Cellular News]
This of course bodes well for other languages that do not use the Roman alphabet. An alternate method would be for one participant to type in English, and for on-the-fly language translation software to convert to Hindi, even in Devanagiri script. This of course is only a partial solution. Other possibilities are to auto-generate Devanagiri script by translating voice input.
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