Xploree adds Santali language to multilingual keyboard

Xploree on Monday announced the inclusion of Santali language on its Aritificial Intelligence (AI)-powered mobile keyboard app.

Xploree currently supports 27 Indic languages, out of which, 22 are constitutional and 113 are global languages.

This step was taken keeping in mind the government's mandate to add local language support in the mobile devices from July 1 onwards.

This crucial step will connect billions of non-English speaking people, giving them the freedom to use the language of their choice on mobile devices.

"Even though the usage of smartphones has risen to exponential figures, local language support in mobile devices is still a concern. There are players in the market who provide multi-language support, but Xploree's richness in decoding the nuances of language, transliteration intelligence and standardisation of spelling surpasses all," said Prima Dona- COO, KeyPoint Technologies.

"This mandate has forced the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to revisit their strategy and comply with the new rules. We have been getting a lot of requests for language support from major OEM players. Most of them are in the pipeline and will be released in the coming days. Initially, the deadline for this was July 2017 which has now been extended till October because OEMs are still struggling to accommodate Indic languages on mobile devices," she added.

The Constitution recognised Santali as one of the 22 official languages, with a majority of the Santali-speaking population residing in Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Tripura, Mizoram, Assam and West Bengal.

Despite the government's mandate that came last year for regional language support in smartphones, there exists no mainstream keyboard that supports all minority languages. The need for a mobile keyboard that supports Santali became even more apparent after the government launched Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA) to impart IT training for digital literacy.

"It is indeed critical that we introduce and facilitate Santali on digital mediums and give the language a boost. Xploree is currently on 10 million devices and has over 18 phone manufacturers as partners. Apart from all the 22 constitutional languages, Xploree also supports Rajasthani, Mewari, Bhojpuri, Marwari, and Sinhala. With the latest addition, we are hoping to minimise the language barrier on digital mediums and reach out to everyone who wishes to use their native language on smartphones," said Prima.

Powered by Artificial Intelligence and natural language processing, Xploree's rich intent technology makes it the most unique mobile keyboard that gauges user intent in real time and shows contextual and relevant recommendations on the fly.