When lyricist Madhan Karky recently tweeted that he needed volunteers to transcribe the lyrics of Tamil movie songs (written in English alphabets) for his lyric-analysis project, he didn’t expect to get queries from Tamils living in foreign countries such as Germany and Sri Lanka. At present, he has sent lyrics to be transcribed in Tamil alphabets to 103 volunteers, a considerable number of whom are Tamils living abroad. “We need about 150 volunteers to finish this project as planned,” he says.His lyric analysis is part of the lyric engineering project by TACOLA (Tamil Computing Lab) in Anna University, which is headed by Madhan. “We needed soft copies of about 10,000 Tamil movie songs to analyse its different aspects. But as we had limited manpower, we decided to opt for volunteers,” he says. “Volunteers need to possess a sound knowledge of the language, Tamil typing skills, basic knowledge of movies and songs to help us,” he adds.With this lyric engineering project, TACOLA aims to create a tool that will offer a range of solutions — from analysing the lyrics to creating fresh lyrics for a situation. “We are trying to define the style of each lyricist by the words they use, and styles followed in different eras,” says Madhan. “For example, Vaali has penned the lyrics for about 10,000 songs, while my father, Vairamuthu, has penned the lyrics for over 7,000 songs. And there is a unique style for each one of them,” he adds. According to Madhan, if you give a situation and tune, the tool will produce a set of lyrics itself. “It’s possible, but it will take time, though,” he explains. Even if there are tools available for other languages, Madhan wants his tool to be more evolved so that it is capable of replacing a human lyricist. “We will apply for funds after the project reaches a certain level,” he says. TACOLA is also involved in 20 other projects, including the biggest online Tamil dictionary, Agaradhi, a Tamil search engine called Coree and online Thirukural called Kuralalayam.[email protected]
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