Typing Sinhala Sensibly, With Google
Google Transliteration. My Sinhala is obviously shit.
I can’t speak Sinhala let alone type it, yet I know that it is a need. Years ago I wrote a Sinhala font and always imagined a transliterated solution, where you could type ‘mata bada gini’ and it would type the appropriate Sinhala. Right now the dominant way to type is with the Wijesekera keyboard layout which has no relation to the letters on the board. Transliteration at least lowers the learning curve a bit, especially since almost everyone in Sri Lanka can recognize the English alphabet. I just discovered (via @dinidu) that Google has a transliteration solution which works for Sinhala. It’s pretty cool. Try it out.
ela niyami…dan….wadakaranwa..
That’s the coolest shit ever
You didn’t know about this?
http://www.ucsc.cmb.ac.lk/ltrl/services/feconverter/t1.html
This is easier because you can see both English and Sinhala text.
Indi, have you tried my “Sayura” quasi transliteration scheme? It comes bundled with Fedora/RedHat for a long time, and also available for other GNU/Linux systems.
It’s NOT transliterated. Typing ?? is “mm”, not “mama”. Although this may sound a bit counter intuitive at first, it is quite fast once you are used to this oddity. Also we use only the English letters and leave the symbols and numbers alone.
http://www.sayura.net/im/
????
@Anuradha I have tried that Linux solution, on your computer years ago, I think. It is good. @Sach, I have tried the Uni thing, also good. There are a lot of decent solutions out now. The Google one is a bit extra interesting in that it integrates with Blogger and Gmail
???????? ?????? ???? ???? ????? ?????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unfortunately your comment section doesn’t support Sinhala unicode. :(
Crazy cool tool !
but for some wired reason in for me is just types one sinhala letter whatever I write. For all the other languanes it seems to be working.
Does anyone know what might be the reason for this ?
@Indi Sayura has come a long way since you checked it out (in 2005 at FOSSSL conference at Excel World if I remember right). There are tons of tweaks that has gone in afterwards.
E.g.: We used “H” to make the previous letter a “mahaprana”. But using shift is not efficient. So I added less used “f” for this, and assigned upper case “F” for less frequently used “fa” sound. Doesn’t sound a major change, but such tweaks greatly improves efficiently, especially when used extensively and daily.
Pretty cool find indi….
Have installed sinhalese font but still unable to view the translation…..even tried the “indic text” troubleshoot on wiki
any ideas on a remedy guys?
Thanx in advance! :D
U-Map,
oh..yes . my comment in sinhala also not showing..
shishya nama lekanaya
13 kala anshaya
santha jon viduhala
panthi bara – prageeth liyanage
ansha bara – prageeth liyanage
panthi bara – geeth nayomal