Towards a Unified Framework: Bridging Roman Urdu and Urdu Nastalique Through Comprehensive Conversion and NLP Techniques

Urdu, spoken by over 100 million people worldwide, exists in two primary written forms: the traditional Urdu Nastalique and the increasingly popular Roman Urdu, driven by social media use. This paper addresses the lack of a comprehensive framework for converting between these two variants, identifying the flaws in current transliteration systems and the absence of a standardized dictionary for Roman Urdu. A detailed literature review reveals significant research gaps in natural language processing (NLP) for Urdu, especially in the domains of sentiment analysis, machine translation, and automatic speech recognition. This study aims to develop a robust methodology for the interconversion of Urdu Nastalique and Roman Urdu, considering the linguistic challenges posed by non-standardized spellings and morphological complexities. By creating an extensive corpus and employing advanced NLP techniques, this research seeks to bridge the gap between the two variants, enhancing the usability and visibility of Urdu in digital communication. The proposed framework not only addresses the transliteration issues but also sets the stage for future research in Urdu NLP, promoting a standardized approach to Roman Urdu. The paper concludes with a proposed methodology for data collection, sample selection, and analysis, contributing to the development of a comprehensive Roman Urdu dictionary and improving the accuracy of transliteration systems.