Does S60 speak your language?
One of the major reasons why I bought my first S60 phone, Nokia 6630, was the fact that Symbian was Unicode compliant. I bought it in 2005. Two months back I got myself N80 and moved to S60 v3. But till now I’ve been unsuccessful in finding a way to read webpages in Tamil, my mother tongue.
I’ve made many attempts to get a Tamil Unicode (ta-IN) font installed in my phone without success. Last week I decided to take a risk by installing Latha, the Unicode TrueType font that comes with Windows, in my N80 using Font Router.
It didn’t work, but I think I learnt something interesting. After having installed the Unicode font and rebooted the phone, I was able to make out Tamil Unicode text in webpages in the S60 Web browser, but the browser displayed the Tamil text somewhat like Internet Explorer 5. Tamil letters are vowels and vowel+consonant combinations. The S60 Web browser split letters into separate characters, which I think is a clear indication that the browser couldn’t render Unicode.
The font installation turned all the English letters in the UI into boxes. During the past 4 years, as a language professional I’ve been involved in translation of Nokia phones to some extent. I, and my erstwhile colleagues and friends who are still involved in Nokia UI localisation, gave our output in Unicode. We believed that Nokia used Unicode text in its phones; but if that was the case and if S60 was fully Unicode compliant, I should have seen junk characters in Tamil instead of boxes. Nokia may be using images (bitmap fonts?) instead of a truetype font.
I’m not sure how many Tamil Nokia phone users want a Tamil UI for their mobiles. I don’t, but I certainly want to read news and blogs in Tamil. I’d also like to add the ability to write in Tamil, if such a basic thing as reading the text weren’t nearly impossible.
Nokia has localised many of its phones into Tamil, so at least its S60 phones should have no problems rendering Unicode. Language packs could be a good solution (they could include a font installer too).
I’d like to see if the latest S60 phones have this issue. If and when I get myself a N95 or N82, the first thing I’d check would be if it can display Tamil text.
If you have had the same problem with your language, please share your experience in the comments, so that we can explore and find out if there is a way to fix it.
January 27th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
i have N82, For me also need taml unicode for mobiles
January 27th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
This thread might be of help. I haven’t tried it yet.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:29 am
hi i have N81 8gb i downloaded a tamil bible to use in my mobile its asking tamil unicode by update the firmware is it possibe with the latest firmware and i have updated my firmware last month only
February 5th, 2008 at 11:48 am
You need Tamil fonts. See this thread on Howard Forums: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=1301884.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:01 am
I think U have to convert that latha ttf file to gdr. Easy gdr converter software not helping to me to convert. But I found another software after so many searches,
that is KVT SYMBIAN FONT CONVERTER. I had converted fonts, But not try still now.
March 20th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I tried that with Nokia 6630, but the converted gdr fonts showed only junk text. Now I’ve got a more expensive phone and wouldn’t want to brick it!
March 25th, 2008 at 11:46 am
You have raised an important issue, something that I’m currently interested in from a technical perspective. I have been told the even sending Tamil or (Indic langauage) SMS does not work as smoothly as operators ond vendors would like us to believe. Have you experienced any such problems?
April 25th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Sorry about replying so late. How can Indic language SMS be a possibility when even the display isn’t right? I’ve tried Murasu’s premium Tamil SMS application, but of course, my old mobile phone (Nokia N80) showed only boxes.
May 18th, 2008 at 5:11 am
please helpme with tamil font for n70. can i able to read tamil sites in it???
May 18th, 2008 at 5:14 am
can any one do his favour for me.. find me a solution to view tamil web pages in my nokia n70
with love
kamalidas
August 24th, 2008 at 7:09 am
sir i too have N82. I have been trying to a tamil web font in my phone. Not success. Pls if anyone knows this way help me. raviadg@gmail.com
September 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
May I know how to transfer the font from the PC the Mobile (to the specific Font Folder in mobile)
September 21st, 2008 at 3:56 pm
i hav n70me arabic language”””””” i couldnt read tamil fonts…. please help me ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,or if there is tamil n70me ,can i exchange for it since i have warranty period…any idea please send to magleneatyoj@gmail.com
September 27th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Hi, me too interested. See this screen shot http://is.gd/1QGJ