Hindi-TED

Mr. Vivek Tripathi

Hindi through Translation, Example, Dictionary (Hindi-TED) (Android Application)

Need

I, Vivek Tripathi, am student of Diploma course in translation and in PGDT-1 course book (Page no. 43), it's written that "each word has different cultural background and hence it's important to choose right-kind of word in different translations". My innovation Hindi-TED is one practical-result of this principle.

Similarly, my motivation for developing Hindi-TED grew higher when I was doing my PGDT-5 assignment and there were chapters on literature, science, agriculture, sports etc. and the same word were changing its behavior on basis of cultural context, for example :-

You can see here, word “fire”

has different Hindi words

(उर्जा, आँच, आग, ज्वाला)

for different cultural context.

Hence, I collaborated with many govt. translators to create popularity scale of words, based on CEF (Central European Framework) language-scales, as :-

Level 1 – the most spoken word (basic level)
Level 2 – the literature word (mid- advance level)
Level 3 – the literature word (advance level)

My app idea gives sentence-examples and all possible word meanings to bridge the gap of word and cultural context. This Application provides Hindi learners (non-native), Hindi Translators and Hindi Students – a common app to solve their language query.

Hindi TED refers to “learning Hindi through Translation, Example & Dictionary”. Hindi TED specifically disrupts the way we use our dictionary. It solves 3 kinds of problems for respective 3 users:-

Salient Features

Some of the important features of Hindi TED are:-

Hindi and English Word Search Functionality
Dictionary Functionality
Idioms and Proverb Functionality
Hindi and English Voice Search Functionality
Transliteration (लिप्यंतरण) Functionality using Google Voice-to-Text API

Utility

My app-idea will help 3 kinds of potential users (or application):-

User 1- Hindi learners (non-native)-

Part time, I work as Hindi Language Trainer in Mumbai and have students from UK, US, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Austria etc.

All of my student use this app to build-up there vocabulary.

Level 1 Words – for A1 to A2 Language level students (most popular)

Level 2 Words – for B1 to B2 Language level students (less popular)

Level 3 Words – for C1 to C2 Language level students (least popular)

User 2- Hindi Translators-

Translators find sentence-examples, for each word they search.

They also have “Equivalent English Word” functionality to further expand their word-abilities (through Hindi-English mappings).

User 3- Hindi Students –

Students are more focused on enhancing their vocabulary and get meaning of words from all possible perspective.

Hence, this app have :-

Word Search
Associated Word Synonyms
Associated Proverb/Idioms
Associated Examples

My app name is Hindi-TED which refers to "Hindi through Translation, Example and Dictionary". My innovation is more about disrupting the way we use our Dictionary. Hence, following are the innovations :

Hierarchy of each and every word (A1-A2; B1-B2; C1-C2).

Hindi/English Language Learning based on international CEF (Common European Framework for Languages) Levels.

Dictionary Usage by creating Word Family (consist of meaning, idioms, proverb and contextual-meaning).

Translation Support through Sentence-examples.

Details of Development and Implementation Process from Idea to Innovation

The ideation of the app mainly came from my PGDT assignment. When I was doing it, I realized that there are lots of the words which change their contextual meaning according to the context I am talking. For example, a sample from my assignment only:-

Distribution means वितरण,but in the context of rainfall, it becomes विभाजन. Another a significant example is the name of our university itself –

Also a second case that being a Hindi language enthusiast, I dedicate lot of time doing activities related to the Hindi language. In my teaching, one of the aspects is spoken Hindi language training. While doing the same, a most common problem which arises from all of my students is that they are keen towards learning the language, but not the technical-words of Hindi but the most common/most popular Hindi words. One hypothetical solution would be to take a dictionary and underline each and every popular word, which is totally unrealistic and cumbersome.

Conclusive Remarks- Every word has its contextual meaning. So, how to pre-understand the context (background) of words before using it, and how to know the most spoken words of the Hindi or any other language?

Thanks to "Student Innovation Award-2019" by NCIDE, IGNOU which motivated me to go beyond my abilities and do android programming to see my app (Hindi-TED) coming in the market to solve the problem mentioned above.

So, I myself designed the app and did the development (coding) for minimal possible design. It doesn't look heavily furnished with very smart design to grab attentions, but serve my functionality/purpose of making it.

My goal was not to just create dictionary app by compiling all words into the app, as this has been done by Oxford and many such reputed organization. I was thinking one step ahead of it. I was looking for an app which can serve any Hindi- user segment to solve all query they might have with the language viz. lexical content, non-lexical content, fugative/denotative meanings and contextual examples. Hence the roadmap was created and it served as blue-print of our idea which looks like this, in brief-way :-

This app has primary goal of creating an “Algorithm which decides the popularity level of Hindi words”, which today works for Hindi language but once it get stable architecture, it should be able to extend to other languages like Tamil, Telugu, Bengali etc. as well i.e. finding most popular, day to day spoken word of any language.

Hence I never focused on database development and or on design of the app but focused on algorithm of app alot. I know there are lot players in the market creating dictionaries and I never wanted to be “one odder to lot of evens.”

Ideation

The android app has just 1 search bar where you can voice-search, text search or search through camera- any English or Hindi Words, as shown in figure below :-

Innovation

This app gives sentence-examples and all possible word meanings to bridge the gap of word and cultural context.

Language-learners with basic-minimum words
Language-enthusiasts with multiple word options
Translators with examples according to context
Dictionary-users with meanings

I created the UI design which should be very easy to operate, for any non-technical user and hence the android app (Hindi- TED) came into the picture.

I started working on designing and programming in month of July, 2019 and now the app have few 100 words-family. Since its collaborative opinion on “how to make word-family or word-hierarchy”, I am taking help from experienced translators and language trainers as well.

I am working on increasing word levels by creating a database of 10,000 words and near 1000 word-family (minimum) using 3 major dictionary, which are:-

अंग्रेजी- हिंदीकोश, डॉ कामिल बुल्के, कैथोलिक प्रेस
वर्धा हिंदी शब्दकोश (संपादन - रामप्रकाश सक्सेना)
प्रशासनिक शब्दकोश (राजभाषा आयोग)

The app looks very basic from the front-end with single search-bar in the first screen, but lot goes inside and a basic ideation is shown in the architecture of the app below:-

The architecture of the app contains frontend, backend and database interaction. The frontend consist of web-app which manages the data-addition to our server and Admin CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for content-management. The data goes through API (application program interface) following REST protocol. The backend have business segment and third party integration where stays our popularity-matching algorithm to decide which word is popular and which is less popular. The popularity value stays in our MySQL database. Further infrastructure automation is also planned for user’s smooth experience in the app.

Among the 3^rd party integration, we have added the Ads to keep app sustainable and functioning each day and keeping the cost of our server.

Cost Effectiveness and Commercialized of Innovation

My app is free-of-cost for its users.

I am looking to have a business deal with private vendors of dictionaries. For Example, Shabdkosh (Hindi) or Oxford dictionaries (English and Hindi both) are some examples who have their online-sites and I am working on functionality to provide their dictionary-content in my app and generating paid-leads to their website.

This B-model will help me to keep my app into survival and if it will not work, I will go for Ad based B-model. Some of the preferred ad types which I am planning to incorporate are :-

Last but not the least, both model can work together to develop more functionality into the app and also be commercial for me to keep app working for long-time.

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