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Karky Research Foundation, which develops Tamil language and teaching tools, is looking to work with leading social media platforms for its latest product Tamil word analyser tool PiriPori.
Madhan Karky, lyricist and Founder, Karky Research Foundation (Karefo), a non-profit organisation, said: “The tool PiriPori, which will be launched on February 15, uses morphological analysis in natural language processing to better the search results for regional languages.”
Explained Karky: If you want information related to a Tamil word, say maram (tree), you will get search results that contains the word maram but its related words like marangal (plural form) or its variations that convey the same meaning are left out.
How it works
What PiriPori does is, it breaks down words based on the Tamil word structure and empowers the search engine to bring out the results for the word and also the variations for that topic. Similar logic could be applied for searching in social platforms.
“This is significant considering more people are communicating in their regional language,” he said. Integrating such tools with social media platforms betters the result and improves accuracy. “We are planning to talk to social media platforms for funding for this project,” he added.
Karefo also works with Kindle team of the e-commerce platform Amazon.com for its dictionary application Chol. “The application is free and is automatically downloaded when a user buys a Tamil book in Kindle,” he added.
The Foundation has partnered with the Tamil Development Department of the State government along with the University of Madras, International Institute of Tamil Studies and Tamil Virtual Academy in its dictionary project Sorkuvai.com. “Sorkuvai has over 3.4 lakh Tamil words and around 200 words are added every day. It is expected to be launched soon,” Karky said.
Apart from these, the Foundation has developed web applications like Paeri (name and place finder), Olingoa (transliteration tool), Kural, Paadal (lyric finder), Emoni (simile generator), eN (tool to convert numbers to words) and aadukalam (Tamil word games). All of these are available for free at the http://www.karky.in/karefo/ and accessible by the registered users, who total 25,000 now.
Partnerships
Karky has invested close to ₹60-70 lakh in these projects since 2013. “Almost half of my earning as a lyricist and dialogue writer goes into the foundation,” he added. But now, he wants these applications to be accessible through mobile as well. For that, Karky says, he needs funding and partnerships that will take the tools to a wider audience. “We are in touch with Tamil sangams across the world and some have come forward to fund the projects,” he added.
Karky said: “We will be able to take it forward once the approval for the Foreign Contribution (regulation) Act is in place.”
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