Roadmap
Our product goal is to create tools and resources for individuals to improve their proficiency and fluency in a language, and for organisations to incorporate native languages in their day to day operations. This post discusses the products envisioned for this project and the skill sets in people interested to contribute to them.
Note that because of the non profit nature of Lotha, and because the contributions here are made by people in their free time with no remunerations, our product development is slow.
Knowledge Base
Launched on April 07, 2024, our knowledge base is a growing repository of content helping users improve their fluency and proficiency in their mother tongues. Content include, articles, relationship names, a handbook of grammar for various Bhāratīya languages, a repository of saying, etc.
- Individuals who can build a repository of sayings present in the language of their interest, with its elucidation, examples and a translation in English, may contact us.
- Individuals, preferably language teachers or students, who are adept in the grammar of any Bhāratīya language, and is willing to collaborate with others on writing a small handbook of grammar for online publication can also contact us.
Transliteration Tool
We wrote the need to adopt and use properly transliterated Bhāratīya (Indian) words. The goal of this product is to help users transliterate Bhāratīya words to the Latin character set and use them wherever necessary — especially in the social system.
- Programmers interested in languages, scripts and building transliteration tools may contact us to build this.
Personalised Portal
This website is currently a simple content based website where resources in all languages are dumped togeher. We aim to create a web portal with a login system which can be personalised to the user's mother tongue (or language of a choice). Only resouces of that langauge, along with gamification and improvement stats for the user will be available.
- Programmers with experience in building web and mobile applications may contact us to collaborate on this project.
Technical Dictionary
The goal of this product is to empower Bhāratīyar (Indians) to have professional conversations in their mother tongues. This product will cover translations of technical words from multiple fields and industries such as trade, management, mathematics, science, software engineering, construction, academics, etc.
- Teachers who have taught these subjects in native tongues, or individuals with an intense passion for a particular language and are confident of building dictionaries may contact us to build this.
Typing Practice App
The goal of this product is to increase typing proficiency in Bhāratīya (Indian) languages using either the inscript keyboard or the future Bhāratīya keyboard. Gamification among the users will be implemented too for larger participation.
- Programmers adept in the JavaScript ecosystem may contact us to collaborate on this project.
Speaking Practice
This tool will help users practice fluent speaking in a particular language — especially formal and professional communication. Users will speak into the device (phone), and this tool will identify non-native words and grammatical mistakes in the speech input, and chart corrections for the user.
- ML/DL engineers with an interest in building LLMs trained in Bhāratīya (Indian) languages may contact us to collaborate on this product.
Development of Scripts
Some languages in Bhārata (India) don't have or use an indigenous script for writing and rely on Latin (English) characters. The challenges of this arrangement are evident as some characters are modified or added to articulate a particular sound that the Latin characters alone cannot handle.
One of the reasons for the adoption of Latin characters for the writing of these languages are the influence of European colonisers and foreign Christian missionaries. Lotha isn't interested in a blame game, we are instead interested in accelerating the development of indigenous scripts for such languages or at least help them to migrate to a more apt existing indigenous script. More on this in due time.
Bhāratīya Keyboard
The goal is to design an entirely new keyboard layout for Bhāratīya(Indian) languages that is more efficient and comfortable than the existing ones.
- Designers skilled in web parsing, statistics and utilitarian designs may contact us to collaborate on this product.