Q. What led you to the idea of building the app, Urdu Thesaurus? Why a thesaurus?
A. The Urdu Thesaurus (www.UrduThesaurus.com) began with the idea for a dictionary. In my work as a translator, I soon learned the value of portable resources. A significant part of my translation of the Urdu classic Dastan-e Amir Hamza (The Adventures of Amir Hamza) was done while commuting in buses and trains, to and from work, sitting in hospital wards when my mother was unwell, and a few pages were done even between dances, if I remember correctly. It had to be a light, portable resource. Again, classical Urdu prose typically uses a lot of Persian, Sanskrit, and Arabic terms. But there is no one Urdu dictionary, or, for that matter, no ten Urdu dictionaries, in which you could find all the terms you wish to look up. So, a composite lexicon that draws words from many sources was another sought feature. I felt that if we could create such a resource, the hindrance to reading, understanding and translating our classics will be removed for the coming generations. But it is a very complex and expensive undertaking. So I thought of building the thesaurus first, because, it was simpler to create, test and employ.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi. Pic Courtesy/Sharjeel Ahmad)