Author: Ashish Vashi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 29, 2009
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Girl-power-puts-Gujarati-lexicon-at-your-fingertips/articleshow/5170661.cms
If the online Gujarati lexicon has proved
to be a boon for translators or writers, a bunch of five 20-something girls
ought to take the credit. Their love for their mother tongue is phenomenal
and so is their passion for language. Hence, with the help of technology they
have made words available at fingertips for Gujaratis.
Sumaiya Vohra, Padma Javad, Maitri Shah, Shruti
Amin and Deval Vyas run an IT firm which handles jobs of researching and compiling
Gujarati words. After digitizing 'Bhagwadgomandal'-a major dictionary of Gujarati-their
recent achievement was to put 'lokkosh', a Gujarati lexicon, online. It has
been accessible to netizens from Tuesday.
"Before this company, we were working
at different places. We share the same wavelength and passion for Gujarati
language. At present, there are various projects in our kitty, including a
major one for creating a good spell-check software for Gujarati language,"
says Deval Vyas, who handles business development.
"In Gujarat there is a lot of work to
be done. If we failed to make Gujarati language online or in digital medium,
it would have been a disaster. The diaspora needs it and there is immense
business opportunity in this field," added Vyas.
This website translates words from Gujarati
to English through the thesaurus facility. "The commitment of these girls
towards Gujarati language is tremendous, so our firm has a full confidence
in this team," said Ashok Kaneria of Gujarati Lexicon, an NRI-supported
foundation for supporting and developing Gujarati language on the web.