I've always wondered what do these words mean? Ofcourse we get a lot of stuff when you look it up, but where does Lipikaar play its role?
— Lipikaar User
Wikipedia definition: Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. It can also mean the conversion of a written source into another medium, such as scanning books and making digital versions. A transcriptionist is a person who performs transcription.
Thus ‘Typing’ is also a form of transcribing information. Therefore Lipikaar is a method for Transcription too.
Example: If Munna says, “Abe Circuit, usko fatka!”, someone using Lipikaar will transcribe it in a Unicode data format as, “अबे सर्कीट, उस्को फट्का!”
Wikipedia definition: Typing is the process of inputting text into a device, such as a typewriter, computer, or a calculator, by pressing keys on a keyboard. It can be distinguished from other means of input, such as the use of pointing devices like the computer mouse, and text input via speech recognition.
Lipikaar is a method which uses your computer keyboard as its device to satisfy your typing needs. The computer is actually getting some numeric values which are through your English keys.
Wikipedia definition: Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice.
From a linguistic point of view, transliteration is a mapping from one system of writing into another, word by word, or ideally letter by letter. Transliteration attempts to be exact, so that an informed reader should be able to reconstruct the original spelling of unknown transliterated words. To achieve this objective, transliteration may define complex conventions for dealing with letters in a source script which do not correspond with letters in a goal script.
Lipikaar is not Transliteration, unlike other Unicode tools available online. We respect the attempts and all the hard work put in by various companies which are doing pretty well with Transliteration software. Its quite amazing to see the computer understanding what a user needs. But Lipikaar is simple, easy and efficient. It supports any slang, dialects, variations in your language. When I typed “Abe circuit, usko fatka!” in a popular transliteration tool, it gave me “आबे सर्क्यूट उसको फाटका”, while I wanted, “अबे सर्कीट, उस्को फट्का”. The best part is, existing Transliteration technologies have done work only for Hindi and a few other Indic languages, whereas Lipikaar supports more than 17 languages (only because its not Transliteration!
Wikipedia definition: Translation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text, likewise called a “translation,” that communicates the same message in another language. The text to be translated is called the “source text,” and the language that it is to be translated into is called the “target language”; the final product is sometimes called the “target text.”
Translation is the easiest way to get your work done. It is like having a translator and a typist doing the work for you. But its very prone to errors as the software often does a word to word translation. Sometimes it’s funny too, like in Google translate, “अबे सर्कीट उसको फटका !” translated to English as, “Shot him Serkit sirrah!”. “हिन्द देश के निवासी सभी जन एक है” gives “All residents of public HIND country has one”!