IndicScript

Introduction

IndicScript is a transliteration library for Indian languages written in PHP. It supports the most popular Indian scripts and several different romanization schemes. Although IndicScript focuses on Sanskrit transliteration, it has partial support for other Indic scripts and is easy to extend.

Requirements

IndicScript requires PHP 7.4

Usage

IndicScript is simple to use.

First install the Composer package manager, then install IndicScript with:

composer require sanskritick/indicscript

then invoke IndicScript like this:

<?php

use Sanskritick\Script\IndicScript;

$indicscript = new IndicScript();
$output = $indicscript->transliterate($input, $from, $to);

In Laravel 5.5 the package's service provider and facade will be registered automatically. In older versions of Laravel, you must register them manually:

// config/app.php

'providers' => [
  ...
  Sanskritick\Script\IndicScriptServiceProvider::class,
],

'aliases' => [
  ...
  'IndicScript' => Sanskritick\Facades\IndicScript::class,
],

The facade is optional, but the rest of this guide assumes you're using it.

Laravel Usage

<?php

use Sanskritick\Facades\IndicScript;

$output = IndicScript::transliterate($input, $from, $to);

Here, $from and $to are the names of different schemes. In IndicScript, the word "scheme" refers to both scripts and romanizations. These schemes are of two types:

1. Brahmic schemes, which are abugidas. All Indian scripts are Brahmic schemes.
2. Roman schemes, which are alphabets. All romanizations are Roman schemes.

The list of all Brahmic and Roman schemes supported are available here Schemes

Disabling transliteration

When IndicScript sees the token ##, it toggles the transliteration state:

    $indicscript->transliterate('ga##Na##pa##te', 'hk', 'devanagari'); // गNaपte
    $indicscript->transliterate('ध##र्म##क्षेत्रे', 'devanagari', 'hk'); // dhaर्मkSetre

When IndicScript sees the token \, it disables transliteration on the character that immediately follows. \ is used for ITRANS compatibility; we recommend always using ## instead.

    $indicscript->transliterate('a \\a', 'itrans', 'devanagari'); // अ a
    $indicscript->transliterate('\\##aham', 'itrans', 'devanagari'); // ##अहम्

Transliterating to lossy schemes

A lossy scheme does not have the letters needed to support lossless translation. For example, Bengali is a lossy scheme because it uses ব for both ba and va. In future releases, IndicScript might let you choose how to handle lossiness. For the time being, it makes some fairly bad hard-coded assumptions. Corrections and advice are always welcome.

Transliteration options

You can tweak the transliteration function by passing an options array:

$output = $indicscript->transliterate($input, $from, $to, $options);

$options maps options to values. Currently, these options are supported:

• skip_sgml - If TRUE, transliterate SGML tags as if they were ordinary words (<b>iti</b> → <ब्>इति</ब्>). Defaults to FALSE.
• syncope - If TRUE, use Hindi-style transliteration (ajay → अजय). In linguistics, this behavior is known as schwa syncope. Defaults to FALSE.

Adding new schemes

Adding a new scheme is simple:

$indicscript->addBrahmicScheme($schemeName, $schemeData);
$indicscript->addRomanScheme($schemeName, $schemeData);

For help in creating $schemeData, see the comments on the addBrahmicScheme and addRomanScheme functions.