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Translating something from Spanish to English is a neat trick, but both languages use the same alphabet.  Google’s looking at something tougher - transliteration - to bridge the gaps between America and several different markets.

To transliterate is, as defined by Dictionary.com, “to change (letters, words, etc.) into corresponding characters of another alphabet or language . . .”  This skill would come in handy when dealing with Russian, Chinese, or Arabic, and the Business Standard’s Surajeet Das Gupta reports that Google has launched beta versions of software to handle each of these languages.

Yet the most recent news relates to India.  “Technologically, translation and transliteration is possible for local Indian languages,” said Kannan Pashupathy, Google’s director of international operations, in an interview with the Standard.  “But I cannot give a time line for their launch.  We are working on all products that will be beneficial to Indian users.  We must be sure before we come up with a beta product.”

So for now, things are being tested in a very limited capacity.  “Google has begun to offer transliteration from English to Hindi on its blogging site, but the Indian R&D team is working on extending the same technology to other products, including email,” states Gupta.

It may not be long before the transliteration software spreads, then - developments at Google India seem to come pretty much one after another.  On the other hand, many of Google’s translations are still imperfect, and transliteration poses some much more complex problems.