Transliteration Utility Released

In the world today, several languages (like Serbian and Bosnian) use two or more different scripts (like Latin and Cyrillic) to represent their written languages. There are times when people would like to either type in one script but produce the other or be able to convert from one script to the other without retyping in everything. The free as-is Transliteration Utility (TU) tool was just released via a joint effort between the Local Windows Solutions and Programs (LWSP) and Speech and Natural Languages (SNL) groups to meet this need.

To use TU for instant transliteration, the Main Form is the appropriate user interface to see real-time transliterations of typed/pasted input text or text of an entire file. Before any transliteration can be applied to input text, you select a transliteration module, which best meets your needs (there are nine that ship with TU).

To transliterate a larger amount of data, spread over several files, a Command Line Interface is available to be used in batch-mode.

One fo the best features of this Utility is that it comes with its own Development Console that allows one to author, edit, and/or test transliteration modules, which uses a simple text format to create TU modules. Thus you are not held to only using the 9 modules that come with the tool, but open to create as many as you need.

To read more about the tool and to download it go to:
www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/translit.mspx

Make sure that you use the feedback pointer to give us suggestions on how to improve the tool.

Dr. Intl