As per the officials, Goa University is planning to digitise and transliterate the multi-script language.The university will use ‘Konkanverter’, developed by the World Konkani Centre at Mangaluru in Karnataka, to transliterate (convert text from one script to another) Konkani texts. Konkani, a multi-script language, can be written in Devanagari, Roman, Kannada, Malayalam and Perso-Arabic.

The initiative comes after the university’s English department conducted a detailed research on digitisation of Konkani texts and their transliteration.

“The study explores the possibility of having a cross-orthographical readership of Konkani using Konkanverter, which will not only increase readership and production of literature, but also help create Konkani digital archive,” according to the university’s website.

The research was conducted by Palia Tukaram Gaonkar, a doctoral scholar with the English department, and associate professor Dr Andre Rafael Fernandes. This phenomenon creates a linguistic and literary gap in the community of Konkani speakers