Project Leader: Dr. Gurpreet Singh Lehal
Recipient Institution: Centre Advanced Centre for Technical Development of Punjabi Language, Literature and Culture, Punjabi University, India 
Amount: USD 29,865
Duration: 24 Months
Commencement Date: 2006

Project Abstract

This project is a culmination of ten years of academic research and literacy development both in the UK and the development of languages in Pakistan and India. The aim of the partnership is to facilitate electronic and written communication between people living in and originating from East (Indian) and West Panjabi (Pakistani) through the development of a Panjabi Language Transliteration Tool.

The target groups will be media organisations (such as magazines/newspapers), literary and literacy promotional organizations, writers and NGOs involved in dissemination activity amongst the urban and rural poor, virtual Panjabi community, schools and colleges.

The intellectual background to this work has already been completed via a grant from the EU, Asia-ITC programme. The Punjabi University at Patiala has also developed a Gurmukhi to Shahmukhi Transliteration software. This project will develop the complementary Shamukhi to Gurmukhi processor as well as facilitate use of these technologies on the web, thus enhancing networking between India and Pakistan.

Both online and offline versions of the transliteration software will be developed. The offline version will be a standalone word processor for Windows platform. The input will be Punjabi text written in Urdu script. and encoded in Unicode. The output will be transliterated Punjabi text in Gurmukhi encoded in Unicode. The main modules to be developed are:

• Shahmukhi-Gurmukhi Dictionary
• Transliteration rules and mapping tables
• Shahmukhi Corpus for statistical analysis (such as frequency analysis, bigram and trigram analysis) to resolve the ambiguity regarding correct Gurmukhi word to be replaced, wherever there are more than one choices for a Shahmukhi word
• Context analysis of Shahmukhi text