Google Transliteration offers an option for converting English characters to the characters used in Kannada and many other indic languages .

This lets you type Indic words phonetically in English script and then have them appear in the respective Indian language . Note that this is not the same as translation - it is the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning. For example, typing "hemanth" transliterates into Kannada as "ಹೇಮಂತ್ " and interestingly typing "hemant" will also result in "ಹೇಮಂತ್".

For more one howto see :Kannada and more