This document proposes developing an optical character recognition (OCR) algorithm for Ge'ez characters. It begins with an introduction to the Ge'ez script and its use in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It then discusses what OCR is, when and why it is used, and the problem of digitizing Ethiopia's historical documents written in Ge'ez. The authors propose using OCR technology and artificial neural networks to develop an application that can recognize Ge'ez characters from images. Such an algorithm could be used to digitize important religious and cultural documents currently only available on paper, helping preserve Ethiopia's intellectual property. Results and conclusion sections indicate the algorithm would make digitization of Ge'ez texts more feasible while a

1. OCR Algorithm for Ge’ez
Characters
By:
Awet Haileslassie
Hadush Hailu
Mulu Hailemariam
Negash Desalegn

2. Contents
፩. Introduction
፪. What is OCR
፫. When and Why OCR
፬. What motivates US
፭. Problem Overview
፮. Proposed solution
፯. Results
፰. Conclusion
፱.

3. Introduction
 Ge'ez (ግዕዝ) (also known as Ethiopic)
is a script used as an abugida for several languages of Ethiopia
and Eritrea. It was first used to write Ge'ez, now the language of
the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean
Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is
often called fidäl (ፊደል), meaning "script" or "alphabet".
 The Ge'ez script has been adapted to write other, mostly
Semitic, languages, particularly Amharic in Ethiopia, and
Tigrinya in both Eritrea and Ethiopia.

4. What is OCR
 OCR stand for Optical Character Recognition is a
technology that is used to translate scanned images of
text into computer editable and searchable text.
 • Input: scanned images of printed text
• Output: Computer readable version of input contents

5. When and Why OCR?
 OCR is used when recreating a similar document in paper
as a document in electronic form takes more time.
 Since we Ethiopian have many historical and religious
books, we have to save them and recreate them. HOW??
 The converted text files take less space than the original
image file.

6. Problem Overview
 In the running world there is a growing demand for the users to
convert the printed documents in to electronic documents for
maintaining the security of their data. Hence the basic OCR system
was invented to convert the data available on papers in to computer
process able documents, So that the documents can be editable and
reusable.
 It won't be an exaggeration to claim that Ethiopia's intellectual
property is hardly digitized; and is stored in paper, that is in the form
of century old parchment paper in monasteries or in the form of file
cabinets in various regional and federal offices.
 Digitizing these a number of documents by hand is not a feasible.

7. What Motivates Us
 The absences of locally and or internationally
developed single production for OCR software for
Ge’ez characters.
 The language is not supported by ASCII standard
to use it on the computer.

8. Proposed Solution
 Our proposed system is OCR Supports in identifying
and digitizing documents made up of Ethiopian
characters.
 By using OCR technology and application Artificial
Neural Network(ANN) we are going to develop an
application software that helps us to recognize
Ge'ez characters from a given images.

9. Results

10. Conclusion
 OCR system for Ge’ez Characters can be efficiently used
to digitize:
 Ethiopian books reside in Ethiopia and countries outside
Ethiopia
 Old books of EOTC
 Many other documents written in Ge’ez or Amharic as well
as Tigrigna.

11. Thank You!!