Inside Google's transliteration

Google's transliteration technology enables the conversion from English text to phonetically equivalent text in Indian languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, etc.

Google's tranlisteration service is either available in integrated form or as Google gadget. It is still not available in the Google Code area. But as it is web based I turned on my sniffer and got the URLs used for this. For each word that is transliterated Google sends an array of converted words back in JSON format.

Output of http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic?tlqt=1&langpair=en|hi&text=hamara&tl_app=3
[ { "ew" : "hamara", "hws" : [ "हमारा","हमरा","हमार","हमर","हामारा", ] }, ]

Usually the first word is the right choice. Multiple words can be used by using comman separated string : hamara,bharat
Output of http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic?tlqt=1&langpair=en|hi&text=hamara,bharat&tl_app=3
[ { "ew" : "hamara", "hws" : [ "हमारा","हमरा","हमार","हमर","हामारा", ] }, { "ew" : "bharat", "hws" : [ "भारत","भरत","भरात","भारात","बहरत", ] }, ]

You can change the output language by changing the langpair parameter in the URL.
http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic?tlqt=1&langpair=en|ta&text=tamil&tl_app=3
[ { "ew" : "tamil", "hws" : [ "தமிழ்","தமில்","தமிழ","டமில்","தமிள்", ] }, ]
langpair=en|hi (English to हिन्दी )
langpair=en|ta (English to தமிழ)
langpair=en|ml (English to മലയാളം)
langpair=en|te (English to తెలుగు )

See the transliteration example below or visit http://indiantrailers.blogspot.com