Programmable Search Engine Blog
The latest news, updates and tips from the Programmable Search Engine team
Automatic transliteration for Custom Search
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Posted by:
Mohamed Elfeky and Adel Youssef, Software Engineers
Typing is harder in some languages than others! When you're searching for content in a specific language, it is often convenient to think in that language, but type in another, e.g., English.
We've just made this easier to do in Custom Search. We've enabled transliteration in Custom Search for a set of languages, making it easier to find news in Arabic, Indian news in Hindi, your favorite Bollywood song lyrics, or local content in a bunch of other Indic languages - Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. Other languages will be enabled soon.
The Google Arabia blog recently posted information on
Google Ta3reeb
, enabling Arabic transliteration in various modes, including within
Custom Search
.
Here's a screenshot from
oneindia.in
, a website that has enabled transliteration in a set of Indian languages.
Users can type in English; automatic transliteration converts the query to
Hindi
,
Kannada
,
Malayalam
,
Tamil
, or
Telugu
, and helps find relevant content in that language.
Automatic transliteration can now be easily configured in the Custom Search control panel using the
Language settings
. It will enable conversion of Roman characters to the above languages, allowing users to search for content in these languages. After you turn transliteration
on
, you can select the specific transliteration languages your users can use.
After enabling transliteration, you can preview your search experience - a language button will show up before the search box, alerting users to the fact that transliteration is enabled, and that they can issue queries in that language while entering the queries in English. In fact, multiple languages can be selected for transliteration. As a query is entered, it is transliterated into the selected language in real-time.
Hit search, and results in the desired language are presented. Voila!
For
more information
on transliteration, you can check out our
help center
. As always, we're looking forward to your feedback on our
user forum
.
Archive
2024
Apr
2023
Dec
Oct
Jun
2022
Aug
Jul
Jun
Feb
2021
Apr
Jan
2020
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jun
Apr
2019
Jul
Jun
Apr
2018
Jul
2017
Jul
Feb
2014
Mar
2013
Dec
Oct
Sep
Mar
Jan
2012
Aug
Jun
May
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2006
Dec
Nov
Useful links
Programmable Search Engine
Help Center
Support Forum
Developer Documentation
Google AdSense Blog
