GaMaBhaNa, a script developed by Omkar Joshi has helped promote local languages on the Internet

He might be qualified to have a command over computer languages but that does not take away the affection that he has towards his mother tongue. GaMaBhaNa, a script developed by Omkar Joshi, software professional who has been working as a subject matter expert with Amdocs has been the bloodline for countless writers to express their feelings in their own regional language on the World Wide Web.

"I am a poet myself and I used to write on a website I would not want to name. I advised the authorities to make it available for all in order to promote writing but unfortunately I did not get a reply from them. I thus thought of developing my own script," says Joshi explaining the motive behind the script.

What followed the decision was GaMaBhaNa, a script that is based on Java, which thus supports Internet as well as Mozilla Fire Fox. Joshi makes the technical details easy by adding, "Most of the websites or local language software that have vernacular medium of expressions have a complicated process to follow if someone wants to post a reply. It is very keyboard specific. For instance, if I type a message on my computer in a particular script, on somebody else's computer who does have that script loaded, the message might represent different characters thus changing the meaning of the entire message."

The characteristic of GaMaBhaNa is that it is transliterate which means that one can type the English spelling of the desired local language word and what appears on the screen is the word in that particular language. Currently, the website and the application supports nine different languages like Marathi, Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Odiya, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu and English. "For instance if one goes to gamabhana.com, he or she can select options of languages. Thus if he or she selects Marathi and types the spelling of his or her name using regular English keyboard; what will automatically appear on the screen is the same in Devnagari," says Joshi.

... contd.