Glad to write about a twitter bot I had written and launched during the last Independence day – Tat Kim. For those who are not in the know, Tat Kim means “What’s that?” in Sanskrit – a very apt name for a Bot and allied service which answers questions of Sanskrit enthusiasts.
What does the Tat Kim Bot do?
Currently Tat Kim bot can be used to read Sanskrit tweets in your own script (Eg, Malayalam or Kannada) – there by taking away the need to know how to read Hindi (or Devanagari) to be able to consume these tweets.
Why?
Sanskrit is a pan-Indian language and it should be free from the constraints of a regional Lipi like Devanagari. Also, it helps to remember that some of the seminal works in Sanskrit were recorded not in Devanagari, but in Grantha Lipi (more or less Malayalam of our times)
Usage
If you happen to find a Sanskrit tweet from your favourite Sanskrit tweeple, comment on that tweet in the below format
@TatKimBot {languageCode}
Where language could be one from:
en, hi, bn, gu, kn, ml, or, pa, te, ta, mr
Details of Language codes:
| Code | script |
| en | English |
| hi | Devanagari (Kept to support translations to Hindi at a later point of time) |
| bn | Bengali |
| gu | Gujarati |
| kn | Kannada |
| ml | Malayalam |
| or | Oriya |
| pa | Punjabi |
| te | Telugu |
| ta | Tamizh (The transliterations will be lossful due to Tamil script not being elaborate enough to represent all sounds of Sanskrit) |
| mr | Marathi (Kept to support translations to Marathi at a later point of time) |
Example:
@TatKimBot ml
And the bot responds in 15 seconds as in the below screenshot:
Archives of the transliterations
The archives of the transliterations done by Tat Kim Bot will be available at the web portal https://tat.kim
(A sample screenshot below)
Look forward to people finding and using it during the next few months!
Kj [/.] Sreekumar programs computers as a hobby and profession. Into programming from his school days, Sree uses Codemarvels to key in facts and fixes he finds interesting while working on different projects. Some of the articles here give away a few shades of his philosophical leanings too.