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Introduction
The society at large can benefit from the Information
Technology effectively if people can communicate with
computers in their own languages. The discipline of research
which addresses these issues is Natural Language Processing
(NLP). NLP is concerned with the computational modelling
,design and development of a wide varieties of systems
that lead to Human Computer Communication. Since most
of the communication is in written or spoken form of language,
the very first aspect of NLP is the ability to recognise
written or spoken utterances. This constitutes development
of systems that can understand the above form of language.
Thus NLP leads to providing Natural language interfaces
to databases, computers; providing tools for linguistic
reasarch; machine translation, optical character recognition,
speech to text and text to speech conversion etc. NLP
in Indian context may be termed as Indian Language Processing
(ILP).
| Special requirements for Indian Language Processing (ILP) |
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India is a large multilingual society with
as many as eighteen constitutionally recognised languages
including English and the National language is Hindi. There
are multiple scripts for these languages. With increase
in trade and development across the country it becomes necessary
for the people to communicate in more than one language.
In such circumstances, Information Technology(IT) appears
to be a promising tool for the development of ILP systems
which aim at overcoming the language barrier. These ILP
tools could be designed using many approaches such as :
Development of GIST Technology was a major breakthrough,
which made it feasible to enter, process and view data
in Indain languages. Keeping in view the need for promoting
Information Technology in Indian Languages to help in
crossing over the language barriers,Department of Information
Technology, Govt. of India launched the Technology Develoment
for Indian Languages (TDIL) Programme in 1991.The major
objectives of the programme are to develop IT tools for
language processing, to facilitate Human- machine interaction,
to promote the use of IT tools for various Indian languages
studies, research and to promote R&D efforts in information
processing in Indian languages.Prior to this, MIT promoted
development of the technology for Indian Languages through
other programmes like Knowledge Based Computer Systems
Development(KBCS) and Technology Development Council (TDC).
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