SU researcher unveils 'Sindhi spellchecker'

A faculty member and scholar for M.Phil research programme at the Institute of Information and Communication Technology, University of Sindh, Zeeshan Bhatti has completed his M.Phil research on Sindhi word spellchecker and defended his final M.Phil seminar on Thursday.
The seminar was arranged at the Multimedia Centre of IICT, which was attended by a number of eminent scholars from the disciplines of science faculty and research scholars. Bhatti completed his research under the supervision of Professor Dr Imdad Ali Ismaili, Pro. Vice Chancellor, Mirpurkhas Campus and Co-supervisor, Professor Dr Asad Ali Shaikh Director IICT. In his presentation, he highlighted main features of his research work, benefit to Sindhi language and literature and future plans.
He said that spellchecker is an application programme that flags words in a document which may not be spelled correctly. He said that electronic database is embedded into a word processor of web browser to check the spelling of the word being composed against the word in its knowledge base. He said that the spellchecker has been designed to perform the tasks like scanning and extracting words, comparing the extracted words against a known list of correctly spelled words.
He said that his research work an attempt is made to develop a Sindhi word spell checker system which transparently checks each Sindhi word for any spelling mistakes as it is entered in a software, providing correct spelling suggestions as alternate word in place. He said that new system is able to identify and report various type of spelling mistakes.
The scholar said that this research work title as Sindhi Word Spell Checker has been successfully completed making it the first pioneering work towards the field of Sindhi computing. He added that it builds the foundation for development of further algorithms and system based on Sindhi language and to enhance and modernise the Sindhi Computing era. The proposed method of string matching and token creation of Sindhi words has shown the feasibility of extension for complex scripts similar to Sindhi or based on Perso-Arbaic script.
He further said that classification of errors in Sindhi language and the identifications of various error patterns could be further utilised to understand and extend the linguistics study of Sindhi language and its written form. The scholar said that a Sindhi word spellchecker was a real need as no spell checker is available for composing Sindhi documents and added that Sindhi scripting contains maximum number of characters with large number of vocabulary and cursive style of writing with ligatures.
Thus it is impractical to compose a document without spelling mistakes. The spellchecker will aid greatly in Sindhi computing and composing by providing an accurate guide and vocabulary of Sindhi words with spellings the scholar said and added that obtaining Sindhi words from various sources (ie newspapers, books, journals and Sindhi dictionaries) and saving them in the database.
He informed that approximately 95,000 words have been stored in the checker so far. While speaking on the occasion, noted scientist, Dr Iqbal Bhanger appreciated the effort of the scholar and its presentation. He said that Sindhi word spelling checker definitely would help Sindhi language in its development and progress.