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Google Labs updates transliteration tool

Google has updated its Transliteration app to feature the ability to write messages in English and transliterate those to non-Roman characters. The option works really well.

Don Reisinger
CNET contributor Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
Don Reisinger

Have you ever wanted to type something in English and have the tool you're using spit that same message out in Hindi? What about Greek? With the help of Google's transliteration feature, you can.

The search giant's Bangalore office wrote that typing on Roman keyboards makes it "difficult to type in Indian languages." In an attempt to find a fix, the team in India released Google's Transliteration offering. And on Thursday it announced an update to the feature.

The new and improved Transliteration allows users to select from one of 17 different languages, including Arabic, Gujarati, Kannada, and Punjabi, to name a few. Once that's chosen, they can type a message in English and have it immediately transliterated to the selected language. Users can also look up word definitions in the included dictionary.

I took a few minutes to play around with the new Transliteration and it seems to work really well. I decided to type messages into Greek and Hindi and each time, it returned quick, accurate results.

Click here to try it out.

Google
A look at Google Transliteration in action. Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET