Araz Gholami

Introducing Köçürən, An Azerbaijani Transliterator A free online tool to convert Azerbaijani texts from latin to arabic script

The new version of this project, called Dornam, is now available.
A long time ago, during a late-night gathering with one of my friends, he suggested that I create software that could convert Azerbaijani Turkish text written in the Latin alphabet (used in the Republic of Azerbaijan) into the Arabic alphabet (used in Iranian Azerbaijan). Both of these are essentially the same language, and as you can guess, the only difference lies in the alphabet or script. Since the way this language is written and the way it is read are identical, all that was needed was to map the characters and their relations into the Arabic script , at least on the surface, it didn’t seem too difficult.

At that time, I was also approaching the deadline for my bachelor’s thesis project, so I decided to use this as my final project. From the moment I opened my laptop, the first version of the script took less than 6 hours to complete, and the result was fairly acceptable. I then spent some time improving its interface and usability, and eventually the project Kocuren was born.

The project’s possibilities seemed really exciting: converting thousands of books published in the Latin alphabet into the Arabic alphabet with a single click; publishing blog posts or news articles simultaneously in both alphabets automatically; transforming Azerbaijani Wikipedia articles into the Arabic alphabet using a simple bot; and dozens of other possibilities.

If you’re interested in and capable of working on any of the above, you can contact me.

Visit Project

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