The box will shade blue when it's in Urdu mode. From there, type Roman letters that
look like the Urdu ones you want.
Most Urdu "sounds" map easily to the letters on an ordinary English-language keyboard.
Some sounds need more work to type.
- fyaZ = فياض
- ardo = اردو
- mA nA alfaz` lk h`A = مے نے الفاظ لكھے
- ktab = كتاب
- slam = سلام
- yasr nA fon khrid lia = ياسر نے فون خريد ليا
- 50/50 = ۵۰/۵۰
- To swap between Roman and Urdu mode in this text box, you can also hit
ctl-' (that's control and apostrophe).
- If all the letters don't show up properly, try installing the
Nafees Web font and reloading this page.
- Use capitals for pharyngealized ("heavy", "hard") consonants like ص
(compare s and S).
- Use apostrophe for ع.
- Some sounds are typed as pairs of letters. For example, k produces a
ك, and kh produces خ. The letter pairs that exhibit
this behavior are: kh dh sh gh ch
zh s` t` h` a` z`.
- If you want a space after such a pair of letters, you will have to hit space twice. Try
typing this sequence of keys, including the spaces, to see the difference:
kb kh k h h` s`.
Does it work with Internet Explorer?
No, but it doesn't seem difficult to fix. I just haven't got around to it yet.
How complete is the transliteration?
I don't know. It works for the few words or phrases I've tried. If you find that you can't write
something with it, let me know.
Isn't this harder to use than Roman Urdu?
Yes. The goal of this mini-application is to let people type in proper Urdu, which means it has
cover all Urdu sounds. For example, in Roman Urdu you can write lahore kis taraf hai? and not
worry about whether the t in taraf is ت, ٹ or ط.
On the other hand, if you're trying to put some Urdu text in an advertisement, you'd probably want
to use the right letter.
What's next for this application?
There will be a bookmarklet that you can use to write in Urdu in a textarea on any web page.
Can I use this on my site?
Certainly!
- Include the javascript in your page:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.node.pk/urdu.js"></script>
- Assign an "id" to each textarea (or input tag) you want users to type Urdu in:
<textarea id="input"></textarea>
- Add some javascript after the textarea to do
<script type="text/javascript">
bindUrdu(document.getElementById('input'));
</script>
- Tell your users that they can hit ctrl-' (control and apostrophe) inside the textarea to switch
to Urdu at any time.
There are a few options to the bindUrdu function; see the comments in the
javascript file for details.
Are there any other transliteration apps out there?
I've found a few other transliteration tools:
- PakTranslations has a server-side transliteration
tool. It probably performs better than this one as they have a large pre-built dictionary of
transliterated words.
- ApniUrdu also does server-side
transliteration. It returns letters as images.
- The Urdu Poetry Archive has a
transliteration scheme that might be worth exploring.
- UNESCO also has a transliteration
table.
Send me a question, and
the answer might end up here!
It is very likely that the phonetic mapping is inefficient for some words. If you have
trouble writing something, or if you think some of the mappings should be different,
send me a detailed email.
This page and the related code are more-or-less blatant copies of Evan Martin's
Arabic
transliteration page.
Web-based Urdu Transliteration by
Faried Nawaz is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No
Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
