Re: Convert Devanagari into romanized text: any automatic tools?

[Somadeva Vasudeva]

In a message dated 20/3/04 5:30:43 pm, birgit.kellner at UNIVIE.AC.AT writes:


> I was wondering whether there are any utilities which can convert
> Devanagari writing into romanized text and also implement proper
> word-separation. I doubt that something like this would be possible, but
> maybe I'm thinking along the wrong lines.
>
Going from Roman to Devanaagarii is comparatively easy. Probably the best way
is to write a PERL text filter. For instance, if you take the huge and
fabulous (despite many typos) collection of "saastric etexts available from the
Raasthriya Sanskrita Vidyaapeetha (http://sansknet.org/) you will need to convert
them to whatever encoding you use. They have helpfully provided a couple of
conversion programs to do this. For me (mac os x) these produced a number of
unexpected errors (tp for pt etc.) because there are often several ways to input
conjunct characters, so I ended up spending an afternoon writing a PERL
filter. Still not perfect but the remaining errors can be removed by hand when
reading through the texts.

I have never tried word-separation but it is not impossible. There are
electronic Sanskrit parsers available, see for instance "Desika" at
http://tdil.mit.gov.in/nlptools/ach-nlptools.htm.

best wishes,

Somdev Vasudeva
(happy to send the PERL filter for Sansknet to anyone who needs it)