JestineLegg9: Made New Stub Basic Info - done

2024-01-01T15:26:52Z

Made New Stub Basic Info - done

New page

{{more citations needed|date=February 2022}}

'''Indic OCR''' refers to the process of converting text images written in Indic [[Writing system|scripts]] into [[e-text]] using [[Optical character recognition]] (OCR) techniques. Broadly, it can also refer to the OCR systems of [[Brahmic scripts]] for languages of [[South Asia]] and [[Southeast Asia]], not just the scripts of the [[Indian subcontinent]], which are all written in an [[abugida]]-based writing system.

[[Optical character recognition|OCR]] for Latin characters is still not 100% accurate but a relatively high degree of accuracy in conversion has been able to be achieved. Such accuracy has not yet been able to be achieved for Indic scripts using OCR. This is due in part to the writing systems of [[Languages of the Indian subcontinent|Indic languages]] as well as a lack of standard representation, encoding, and support among operating systems and keyboards.

The [[Centre for Development of Advanced Computing]] (C-DAC) and [[Technology Development for Indian Languages]], the premier R&D organisation of the [[Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology]] (also known as MeitY) of [[India]] have carried out many projects relating to OCR. Their projects include OCR for [[Malayalam]], [[Odia language|Odia]], [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]], [[Telugu language|Telugu]] and [[Devanagari]] [[Writing system|script]].

==Properties of Indian writing systems==
There are 22 [[Languages with official status in India|officially recognised languages]] in India. Of these, [[Hindi]], [[Bengali language|Bengali]] and [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]] are the most widely spoken Indo-Aryan languages and are also the fourth, seventh and tenth most widely spoken languages in the world respectively.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world|title=The 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World|last=GmbH|first=Lesson Nine|work=The Babbel Magazine|access-date=2018-03-20|language=en}}</ref> Two or more languages can be written with same script. For example, [[Devanagari]] is used to write [[Hindi]], [[Marathi language|Marathi]], [[Rajasthani language|Rajasthani]], [[Sanskrit]], Bhojpuri and others, while [[Eastern Nagari]] is used to write [[Bengali language|Bengali]], [[Assamese language|Assamese]], [[Meitei language|Manipuri]] and others.

Apart from basic characters as [[consonant]]s and [[vowel]]s, most Indic languages combine 2 or more basic characters to form compound characters. The shape of a compound character is more complex than the constituent basic characters. Some Indo-Aryan languages (including Hindi and Punjabi) have a horizontal line over the characters, while other languages (including [[Gujarati language|Gujarati]]) and Dravidian languages ([[Malayalam language|Malayalam]], [[Kannada language|Kannada]], [[Tamil language|Tamil]], and [[Telugu language|Telugu]]) do not. These are some of the main challenges for creating a single OCR for all Indic languages.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=2004-09-01|title=Indian script character recognition: a survey|journal=Pattern Recognition|language=en|volume=37|issue=9|pages=1887–1899|doi=10.1016/j.patcog.2004.02.003|issn=0031-3203|last1=Pal|first1=U.|last2=Chaudhuri|first2=B.B.}}</ref>

Indic OCR also generally includes support for recently invented scripts in India like [[Ol Chiki]], [[Warang Citi]], [[Mundari Bani]], etc. which are mainly created for writing [[Munda languages]] of [[Austroasiatic family]].

The concept of [[Letter case|upper/lower case]] is absent in Indic scripts. Apart from [[Urdu]], [[Sindhi language|Sindhi]], [[Kashmiri language|Kashmiri]] and [[Thaana]], all other Indic languages are written from left to right.

==Examples==
# SanskritOCR - OCR software for Sanskrit, Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages based on the Devanagari script. Sanskrit OCR is developed by a Sanskrit scholar from [[Germany]] - ''Dr. Oliver Hellwig'' of Department for Languages and Cultures of Southern Asia, [[Freie Universität Berlin]]. The official website is in German. The interface of earlier versions of the software was also in German, but later versions have an [[English language|English]] interface too.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Prabhu|first=S.|date=2020-06-04|title=Pazhur Patasala — a revival story|language=en-IN|work=The Hindu|url=https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/pazhur-patasala-a-revival-story/article31748137.ece|access-date=2021-09-01|issn=0971-751X|quote=An OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for Sanskrit has created an offline corpus that includes over 3,000 books. }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|agency=Hans News Service|date=2019-03-20|title=Digitisation going on at brisk pace: Vice-Chancellor Prof V Muralidhara Sharma|url=https://www.thehansindia.com/news/cities/tirupathi/digitisation-going-on-at-brisk-pace-vice-chancellor-prof-v-muralidhara-sharma-513769|access-date=2021-09-01|website=www.thehansindia.com|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Dikshit|first=Ashish|date=2016-10-27|title=Who Says Sanskrit Is Dead? It's Rocking the Wiki World|url=https://www.thequint.com/news/india/who-says-sanskrit-is-dead-its-rocking-the-wiki-world-wikipedia-wikisource-sanskrit-bharati-shubha|access-date=2021-09-01|website=TheQuint|language=en}}</ref>
# [[E-aksharayan]] - Optical character recognition engine for Indian languages
# Chitrankan - This technology was developed by [[Indian Statistical Institute|ISI]], Kolkata, and transferred to [[C-DAC]]. It processes printed [[Hindi]] text from a [[Image scanner|scanner]] or from an [[image]].
# [https://indic-ocr.github.io/ Indic OCR models] for [[Tesseract (software)]]

==OCR in use==
OCR has been used for [[Wikisource]] and other projects.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Prabhu|first=S.|date=2020-06-04|title=Pazhur Patasala — a revival story|language=en-IN|work=The Hindu|url=https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/pazhur-patasala-a-revival-story/article31748137.ece|access-date=2021-09-01|issn=0971-751X|quote=An OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for Sanskrit has created an offline corpus that includes over 3,000 books. }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|agency=Hans News Service|date=2019-03-20|title=Digitisation going on at brisk pace: Vice-Chancellor Prof V Muralidhara Sharma|url=https://www.thehansindia.com/news/cities/tirupathi/digitisation-going-on-at-brisk-pace-vice-chancellor-prof-v-muralidhara-sharma-513769|access-date=2021-09-01|website=www.thehansindia.com|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Dikshit|first=Ashish|date=2016-10-27|title=Who Says Sanskrit Is Dead? It's Rocking the Wiki World|url=https://www.thequint.com/news/india/who-says-sanskrit-is-dead-its-rocking-the-wiki-world-wikipedia-wikisource-sanskrit-bharati-shubha|access-date=2021-09-01|website=TheQuint|language=en}}</ref>

==References==
<references />
* {{Cite web|url=https://www.cdac.in/index.aspx?id=mlingual_heritage|title=Multilingual Computing & Heritage Computing|website=www.cdac.in|language=en-US|access-date=2017-02-12}}
* {{Cite news|url=https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/274217|title=The Magic of OCR & Augmented Reality Translates text in Indian Languages, Real Time – Without Internet|last=Singh|first=Rustam|date=2016-04-16|newspaper=Entrepreneur|access-date=2017-02-12|language=en}}
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.tdil-dc.in/index.php?lang=en|title=Indian Language Technology Proliferation and Deployment Centre - Home|website=www.tdil-dc.in|language=en-gb|access-date=2017-02-12}}
*{{Cite journal|date=2004-09-01|title=Indian script character recognition: a survey|journal=Pattern Recognition|language=en|volume=37|issue=9|pages=1887–1899|doi=10.1016/j.patcog.2004.02.003|issn=0031-3203|last1=Pal|first1=U.|last2=Chaudhuri|first2=B.B.}}

==External links==
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.indsenz.com/int/index.php?content=software_ind_ocr_sanskrit|title=SanskritOCR - Optical Text Recognition for Sanskrit Documents}}
* {{Cite web|url=https://cdac.in/index.aspx?id=mlc_gist_chitra|title=C-DAC: GIST - Products - Chitrankan|website=cdac.in|language=en-US|access-date=2017-02-12}}

[[Category:Optical character recognition]]
[[Category:Indic computing]]

Indic OCR - Revision history

JestineLegg9: Made New Stub Basic Info - done