A group of dons from IIT Kanpur are developing a new language conversion software called `Anusaaraka' which will enable Indians to view the tomes of information on the internet in their local languages.

The avowed purpose: The internet despite its reach and spread is still an alien phenomenon to the vast Indian hinterland, thanks to the net's mostly English content and interface in the roman character. With Anusaaraka, this is about to change.

The Akshar Bharati group, housed at the Natural Language Processing Lab, Hyderabad University and partly funded by the department of electronics and the Satyam School of Applied Information Systems, has already developed a basic version of the software which enables five Indian languages to be translated into Hindi.

While this has enabled the group to set up a free e-mail server using the new software to send messages inTelugu to be received in Hindi, the software and the source code itself are available for free download on the Net for use and further development on a cooperative basis.

Though several state governments have embarked on a drive to provide internet access to the rural masses for citizen services and e-governance they have been stymied by the mainly English character of the Net. The development of the new software thus opens up doors for faster spread of the internet into the interiors of the country with interface in local languages now a distinct possibility. Apart from content in local languages one can now even think of easier e-commerce and citizen services on the internet.

Though initially the translator is available for putting Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Punbaji input into Hindi, the ultimate aim is to work towards an Anusaaraka which will be able to render English text into any Indian language, says Rajeev Sangal of IIT Kanpur.

"While the funding bodies have agreed not tocommercialise the software and distribute it under a free GPL licence, the attempt is to rope in as many people as possible to achieve this goal," he says.

Interestingly however, the attempt to provide a universal translator for Indian languages on the internet has thrown up the possibility of development of a common Indian language in the future. Thanks to the fact that most Indian languages are similar in structure and grammar, with the help of machines the concepts of origin languages can be taught easily at the school level itself, says Vineet Chaitanya who is heading the Akshar Bharati group, making a strong suggestion for inclusion of such a concept within the three language formula in school curriculum.