Malayalam Language Technology in the Digital Era: Challenges and Prospects

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The rapid growth of Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence has significantly reshaped the functional use, preservation, and evolution of regional languages. Malayalam, a classical language endowed with a rich literary legacy, faces the imperative task of adapting to modern computational environments. This paper presents a comprehensive examination of the digital evolution of Malayalam and the role of computational linguistics in sustaining its contemporary relevance. It investigates key technological milestones, including the transition from proprietary ASCII encodings to universal Unicode standards, advancements in input tools, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis, and AI-driven Machine Translation through Large Language Models (LLMs). Furthermore, the study evaluates critical challenges such as the scarcity of curated, high-quality digital corpora, morphological complexities, and the prevalence of transliteration ('Manglish') on social networks, providing pragmatic solutions for future development.