So, do you blog in Indic Languages ? I do, at times. I was using Blogger.com for this, because, only blogger had the transliteration feature. Now, that we have this extremely useful plugin for wordpress, I can leave blogspot and come back to WordPress.

What is Google’s Transliteration ?

Google Indic Transliteration offers an option for converting Roman characters to the Devanāgarī characters used in Hindi. This lets you type Hindi words phonetically in English script and still have them appear in their correct alphabet. Note that this is not the same as translation — it is the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning. For example, typing “hamesha” transliterates into Hindi as:

Yes, you heard it right. You type it in Hinglish or Manglish, google will transliterate it in to Hindi, or Malayalam. You do not need to know anything about typing in those languages. ( Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu )

Google Indic Transliteration WordPress Plugin

So, here is the plugin. It’s called “Google Indic Transliteration WordPress Plugin”. The plugin is still under development, it works only on HTML mode ( on your wordpress dashboard ) at the moment. But, wait for more, you will see it getting better soon.

Author’s Website Plugin Homepage Download Now

Languages Supported : Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu

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I have started blogging in Malayalam too !!

I find reading Malayalam blogs more interesting than actually writing blogs in Malayalam…. may be because I am not used to writing Malayalam online using the transliteration and similar stuff, where we write words using English letters which will be changed to the desired language automatically.

When I started reading Malayalam blogs, I found that most of them use Blogger.com since they have the transliteration feature, a feature which makes blogging in Indic languages really easy. Why don’t they just use WordPress.org or WordPress.com ? We really need more people start using WordPress, to blog in Indic languages. Don’t you think so ?

Initially I started with Blogger itself, and then started copying the content to WordPress and it worked perfect. Just that I typed everything using Blogger.com and then published it using WordPress.org blog on this domain itself. ( sssh … secret .. I have another installation of WordPress on this domain where I play with themes and now Malayalam Blogging )

If you install certain softwares, which enables transliteration on your computer, you can directly blog in Indic languages, using WordPress platform. So I installed “Keyman” and started writing to WordPress blog directly, in Malayalam.

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I know I don’t have enough experience in Malayalam blogging to actually get in to writing a review about it. These are my random thoughts on writing in Malayalam or few notes on what I am doing there.

(1) I am still trying to learn to type in good Manglish that Blogger will understand, in order to transliterate it in to Malayalam words.

(2) I do not know how Google will index blogs in Mayalam or any language other than English. I am still at zero on SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) in Indic languages including Malayalam.

(3) 99% of Malayalam blogs are on blogger.com ( or blogspot ) and there are only very few people who actually try it with WordPress.com or wordpress.org

(4) There is a good community of Malayalam bloggers.

(5) There is lot of serious blogging happening. They are discussing politics,history,international issues,poetry,culture.. and lot of serious topics.

(6) Malayalam blogging community is trying everything possible to get more people in to Malayalam blogging.

(7) Most of the Malayalam blogs are 100% in Malayalam.

(8) I am yet to see someone who is trying to make money through blogging.

(9) I need to personally ask Malayalam bloggers if they are satisfied with what they get on Blogger.com

(10) I will try to bring them to WordPress.

WordPress is my favorite blogging platform and it will remain so, always. However, there is some kind of “soft corner” being formed towards Blogger.

Reason ? …. I found lot of Malayalam blogs on Blogger. Blogger makes it easy to write and publish in Malayalam and few other Indic languages. There is a good community being formed around these Malayalam blogs on Blogger. I did try this Malayalam typing, and found really really easy.

The Malayali Blogging community, is trying hard to Malayalam Blogs popular. I am trying to find information on how to blog in Malayalam using wordpress. I would like to document it, at one place. If you have some information about WordPressing in Indic languages, or some plugins that you know about, please drop me a comment here

So far, I have managed to post using copy n paste method. I found one plugin too, which is not working here ( may be because its not compatible with the latest wordpress version. ) I will keep you guys updated !!

How to write Malayalam for WordPress

As I said earlier, we do not have something similar to what blogger.com has. For now, you can either use blogger.com, to create the blog content and then paste it to your WordPress blog editor.

If you do not want to use Blogger to type in Malayalam, you can use Google Transliteration to write in Malayalam and then paste it to WordPress.

Where to Look for Malayalam WordPress Blogs

1 WordPress.com Malayalam Page