Transliteration is typing for example Arabic or Greek using the English keyboard , the user types in English “as you hear it” and the transliteration tool will convert the words into its native script.

Since Google launched Ta3reeb its online Transliteration for Arabic, which changes Latin letter into Arabic, it has been working in improving it ,as it has become more accurate and better in editing transliterated words. Google also launched an API for Ta3reeb and started integrating it with its online properties starting from Gmail, Blogger, Knol and its ejabat.google.com.

Google  first  transliteration tool was for the Indic language but later then launched its Arabic tool, after other several attempts to solve this problem most known example is Yamli, which when debuted Arabic transliteration it was the most accurate. However, to use Yamli, you need an internet connection. the other players in the Arabic Transliteration solutions include:eiktub, Arabic keyboard (ArabCrunch. NET profile) and Onkush.

The IT giant Microsoft went ahead and launched Maren its Native Windows Arabic Transliteration in July 2009, which does not need any Internet connection to complete the Transliteration job, meaning faster than Yamli or any other web based transliteration solution.

Google on its side, launched few days ago quietly Google Input Method (Google IME) which is its desktop version of its international web transliteration products, but does not need internet connection to convert the words. Google IME. is available for download from here (Requires Windows 7/Vista/XP (32-bit) which caused me to waste several hours yesterday in testing) and supports the following languages: Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

When installed and enabled, Google IME operates as a small bar that by default will be placed at the bottom right corner of your desktop which can also be moved around. It can be used for more configuration and controlling various features of our IME. It has four icons with leftmost being the application icon. Next to it are IME language indicator button, keyboard button and menu button in that order.

Besides offline support, Google IME offers a number of useful features:Remembering user’s correction, Single click on a word to go to google search, visual Keyboard, and the ability to Switch to English at anytime ( for full features list go here.)

All these transliteration solutions are nice when Arabic or other native language keyboards are not present, but represent a danger to the existence of Arabic language and the other 13 languages, imagine a nation that can not use its own script to write, can we call it a nation!

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