Marathi Bhasha Divasa Greetings.
On this occasion, we would like to share a few things with you.
The website www.saakava.com was launched on May 1, 2010- the Golden Jubilee of Maharashtra. The website gives translation of an English sentence into Marathi. The Machine Translation software Saakava carries out this translation. The software has been somewhat primitive( a pre-beta version) so far. We have been improvising it on a regular basis and will continue to do so. A number of suggestions from users and sentences tried by the visitors of the website were taken into account while making such changes.
A project of this type dealing with languages belonging to different families of languages is very time-consuming and it involves a sizeable financial investment also. It could be possibly the first of its type – at least the first which is so user-friendly.
At present, it deals with nearly two lakh words/word groups/phrases. It handles types of sentences which a seventh standard student ( from a Marathi medium school) is expected to know. The process of incorporating more advanced types of sentences is in progress.
Some experts in the translation studies and profession encouraged us by writing e-mails of appreciation. There were some useful suggestions also. A tenth standard student form Mumbai, whose mother tongue is not Marathi, wrote that Saakava turned out to be useful while studying Marathi. A number of individuals helped either directly or indirectly. Many thanks to all of them.
The version which is being presented on the occasion of Marathi Bhasha Divasa has a special feature. It gives Marathi words ( paaribhashik words) for technical words from various subjects. Our website gives more details. Of course, some other sites also give such lists. Work on branches such as Grammar, Ecology and Medicine has been undertaken. It will be very convenient to have on-line availability of such words.
You can participate in this project in a variety of ways :
1. Please visit the project today. Also, keep on visiting frequently. Since the software is being updated regularly, some of the mistakes that you find may have been corrected later on.
2. Sentences that you input are very useful to us. Sentences of various types help us in improving the software.
3. If you find that a particular type of sentence pattern is always incorrect, please write to us at Saakava.Suggestion@gmail.com
4. Please forward this email to your friends and those who could be interested in English-Marathi translation.
5. Please try to promote Saakava via forums related to translation, machine translation, social networking sites like orkut/facebook and blogs. This will allow Saakava to reach a large number of individuals.
Thanks and best regards.
Sincerely,
Saakava group.