Telugu-speaking people can greet their dear and near ones in Telugu through SMS from their mobile phones to wish them a happy new year, as the state government has launched the unique ‘Telugu Mata’ to make it possible.
Not just the greetings for new year, SMSes and e-mails from smart phones can be done in Telugu language henceforth with the application ‘Telugu Mata’, which can be downloaded for free from the website - www.teluguvijayam.org.
Launching the unique mobile application here on Monday, information technology minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah described it as a landmark achievement.
“It will not just enable the people to send their messages in Telugu but, in future, can also prove to be a job-giver to those who are not well versed in English. Most importantly, it will improve intra-personal communication through mobile phones, given that more than 5 crore out of 8.4 crore people in the state utilise mobile phones,” he said. State Official Language Commission chairman Mandali Buddha Prasad, who received the first message from Ponnala in Telugu using the ‘Telugu Mata’ application, said that efforts were now on to have all the government websites in Telugu.
Typing in Telugu on mobile phone using the application is quite easy and one can master it fast to send the messages at much faster rates. It will help in sending the message to those who are unable to understand English and had to depend on others knowing that language to understand the SMSes they received on their mobiles so far.
Telugu Mata application can be downloaded into all Android phones, tablets, I-phone, I-pad and efforts are on for a version for other phones as well. The state government, which has taken the permanent membership of the Unicode Consortium, has already introduced 21 unicode fonts under Telugu Vijayam project. English-Telugu digital dictionary, word analysis, Telugu thesaurus, other language dictionaries, and Telugu grammar for children among others were also introduced under this project. Efforts are being made to see the increased use of Telugu on the Internet, he said.