IIT-KGP working with Google to make online reading and queries in Bangla easier
KOLKATA: Scientists at IIT Kharagpur are developing resources and tools to help computers provide a better online experience of reading Bangla texts and finding answers to queries in the language.
According to Prof Sudeshna Sarkar, head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT-KGP, the institute is working with Google to develop a Bangla treebank which is an important resource to understand the grammatical structure of Bangla texts as well as their meaning.
Sarkar gave examples about how their final product would work. "If you wish to know about flood-related reports in West Bengal that have appeared in various Bengali newspapers over the past 10 years, the computer can prepare a report for you with dates and locations of the events as well as the steps taken by the government," she said. If an end user wanted to know what several Bangla authors since the time of Rabindranath Tagore had said about Kolkata in their works, the computer could give the answer, she said.
"We are trying to create tools and resources for understanding Bangla by the computer. Such tools will enable a far better online experience for a Bangla language user and give him better access to the information available in Bangala texts," Prof Sarkar said.
The researchers at the Computer Science and Engineering department are developing resources and tools for Bangala, which will facilitate word-level as well as sentence-level grammatical analysis of texts.
"The research will enable better understanding of the Bangla language so that the computer can retrieve answers to your questions," she said.
"We had been involved in a project called Sandhan, partnering with several institutions to develop a cross-language Indian search engine. Typing a query in Bangla, the system will also let you access relevant documents in other languages such as Hindi and English," she said.
The 'Sandhan' system also includes Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Odia and Assamese.
According to Prof Sudeshna Sarkar, head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT-KGP, the institute is working with Google to develop a Bangla treebank which is an important resource to understand the grammatical structure of Bangla texts as well as their meaning.
Sarkar gave examples about how their final product would work. "If you wish to know about flood-related reports in West Bengal that have appeared in various Bengali newspapers over the past 10 years, the computer can prepare a report for you with dates and locations of the events as well as the steps taken by the government," she said. If an end user wanted to know what several Bangla authors since the time of Rabindranath Tagore had said about Kolkata in their works, the computer could give the answer, she said.
"We are trying to create tools and resources for understanding Bangla by the computer. Such tools will enable a far better online experience for a Bangla language user and give him better access to the information available in Bangala texts," Prof Sarkar said.
The researchers at the Computer Science and Engineering department are developing resources and tools for Bangala, which will facilitate word-level as well as sentence-level grammatical analysis of texts.
"The research will enable better understanding of the Bangla language so that the computer can retrieve answers to your questions," she said.
"We had been involved in a project called Sandhan, partnering with several institutions to develop a cross-language Indian search engine. Typing a query in Bangla, the system will also let you access relevant documents in other languages such as Hindi and English," she said.
The 'Sandhan' system also includes Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Odia and Assamese.
