Design and Implementation of Multilanguage Electronic Dictionary for Smartphones
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Date
6/14/2010
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The ever increasing growth of the mobile technology is giving birth to more powerful devices
like smart phones which provide many of the functionalities of personal computers in addition to
making phone calls. As these devices are becoming more and more functional, they are
penetrating swiftly into every society of the world. As a result, there is a need to design and
develop language specific applications that can help users interact with these devices through the
language they understand. Electronic Dictionaries (EDs) are one example of such applications
which can be used as an electronic reference resource containing a library of words and their
meanings. As globalization is bringing the world into one, understanding several languages is
very crucial for smooth interaction and wide communication with others. Thus, several
Multilanguage dictionary applications with two or more languages are becoming integrated on
handheld devices like PDAs and smart phones to cope up with the globalization issue. Having
such Multilanguage dictionary application on mobile devices is very helpful as it makes
language learning easier and faster, can be accessed anytime and anywhere needed, no need of
extra device purchasing and the like.
However, the currently available dictionary applications on these devices cover mostly the
western languages and no focus had been given to develop these applications for languages like
the ones spoken in Ethiopia. In countries like Ethiopia, with various language sets, such a
Multilanguage dictionary is essential for ease of communication among citizens of the country as
well as other foreigners.
This report presents the first attempt for design and implementation of a Multilanguage ED for
Amharic, English, Afaan Oromo and Tigrigna languages on handheld devices. The system has
been successfully developed and tested on an emulator of an Android based smart phones before
deploying it on the target device. The Android platform is chosen among other mobile platforms
as it is designed to support different script types including Ethiopic scripts, and has a promising
future to be used on all handheld devices. Finally, the system has been tested on Android based
HTC Hero smart phone.
Keywords: Electronic Dictionary, Multilingual Electronic Dictionary, Dictionary on Smart
phone, Multilingual Dictionary for Ethiopian Languages
Description
Keywords
Electronic Dictionary; Multilingual Electronic Dictionary; Dictionary on Smart Phone; Multilingual Dictionary for Ethiopian Languages