Sinhala Google Transliterate Now Available
Filed under: Google, Internet, Localisation, Sinhalese, Sri Lanka
On several posts I wrote about Google Transliteration. First they introduced it to Hindi then later other Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada also supported. Few months later they started to support more scripts such as Arab, Hebrew etc.
Today I found something interesting. Yeah now Google Transliterate supports Sinhalese too. Basically Google Transliterate is knowledge based phonetic translator.
Sinhala Transliterate in Action
Personally I don’t recommend anyone to use Google Transliterate as it’ll spoil your typing speed as well as you’ll become so dependent on Google, which is not good at all.
Anyway it’s good to have Sinhalese support. Soon this transliteration service will be available for Sinhalese in other Google’s products such as Gmail, Orkut, Google Search, Blogger etc. Especially the desktop IME client Google Transliterate IME will also be available soon.
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Adios amigos.
Text to Speech Engine for Tamil
Text to speech is a wonderful tool when it comes to accessibility issues. For a long time we had Text to speech in English and other European Languages but not for Tamil.
Today I come to know that there is a tool is being developed at MILE Lab’s. Now tool is still beta but it works fine. I typed some Tamil text like “அன்பே ஆறுயிரே” to my surprise the automated tool read it correctly.
It’s worth giving a try. Hope they’ll release API and all the stuff around it, so we can integrate such services in our websites where disabled people can make maximum use of it.
Try the tool at http://mile.ee.iisc.ernet.in:8080/tts_demo/
Google Chrome is Now Available in Tamil
Good news for Tamil computer users. Google has released their Chrome browser with Tamil interface. Yipee!It’s available in Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya (on Windows Vista alone), Tamil, and Telugu. A Hindi version was available earlier.
Eearlier we had Firefox 2.X with Tamil Interface. It was localised by Thamizha community. Later, Firefox came up with version 3.0 but we didn’t have Tamil interface for it. During this time Firefox 3.0 was released with Sinhala interface.
Later University of Moratuwa worked on and come up with a Sri Lankan Tamil locale interface. Where you need to install English interface, later on top of it you can install the Tamil interface.
Now we have Firefox 3.5 with Tamil interface, but still it’s a Release candidate. So it may be an unstable product.
Now it seems Google has released the browser for most of the major Indian languages including Tamil.
Important part of the help pages of Google Chrome also have been translated into Tamil. But unfortunately they’ve used, Taminglish (Tamilised English words) for some vocabulary. This is often a criticism raised against Google’s translations.
You can grab a copy of your Google Chrome Tamil from Chrome website.
Tamil Spell Checker for Firefox
Good news for Tamil Firefox users. A new version of Tamil Spell checker is available in Firefox. More than 50,000 words have been included with the help of Tamil Wikipedia.
I’ve been using it and its comparatively doing a good job but we need to have some decision machine attached to this spell checker to suggest spellings.
Hats off to Balachander Muruganandam, for initiating this project. He is a known blogger in blogosphere and has developed so much of Gadgets and tools in Tamil.
You can download Firefox Tamil Spell Checker from Firefox website.
Windows Live Messenger in Tamil
I went to download live messenger to chat with my friends and found out the Live messenger is available in
Live Messenger in Tamil
Tamil too. You can select Tamil as language in right hand side drop down list and download it from Live messenger site. Along with Live messenger, other programs such as mail, writer also coming in Tamil.
Once you started the installation it’ll proceed as shown in the figure.
You can also check out their FAQ section also in Tamil.
I thought yahoo will release Tamil messenger first but apparently its Microsoft who taken the lead on localization. Happy to see most of online products are getting localized into Tamil. I can give you several examples such as Tamil WordPress, Google products such as Gmail, Google Docs, Orkut, and Facebook etc.
Hope to see more wide presence of Tamil in virtual world in near future.
Facebook in Tamil
Good news for Tamil Facebook fans. Today I found that Tamil interface is available for Facebook. Translations are done as facebook users. If you wish you can also contribute to the volunteer translations. If your language is not available in the home page then you can check for your language in translations.
Around 50% of the translations are done. Now most of the sites are tend to give Tamil interface for their sites such as Google, Gmail, Orkut, Google docs, WordPress.com, Blogger.com, etc.
As the numbers of Tamil users grow globally these sites are getting ready to grab them all.
As I mentioned above you can help facebook to translate their site into your language but I usually don’t recommend them. These internet giants outsource and do this work very easily but still they suck the blood of the community around their site.
Early days I used to fall for such initiations, where I still remember I used to translate for Google. Remember you translate everything but the copyrights will go to Google, Microsoft and Facebook.
Translation Interface
We must support localizations in open source programs such as WordPress, Ubuntu etc, but never ever fall for these internet giants.
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Google’s Voice Recognition in Hindi & Telugu
Now Google is offering Voice Search in Hindi and Telugu. According to Google it’s a pilot service and they are working on it to improve.
It is Google’s new experimental service making local business information, movie show times and real time flight status available from any phone for free. You get fast access to the same information you would find on Google.com and Google Local Search when you are on the go, anytime, for free.
It is free. 1-800-41-999-999 is a toll free number and it does not cost you anything. Google doesn’t charge you for the information. The service may not be available from payphones, but is available from any mobile phone and land-line in Hyderabad and Delhi.
Now Gmail in Tamil & Other Indian Languages
At last Google has given long awaited Tamil Interface for Gmail. Whole interface is now given in Tamil and some dominant Indian regional languages (اردو (Urdu) , मराठी (Marathi), हिन्दी (Hindi), বাংলা (Bangla), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), ଓଡିଆ (Oriya), தமிழ் (Tamil), తెలుగు (Telugu), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada) and മലയാളം (Malayalam). I think this combination would cover nearly whole Indian population. Read more
Blogger allows you to type directly in Tamil
Blogger has integrated its transliteration facilities to Blogger, so Tamils can directly input in Blogger window. Along with Tamil other Indian languages also included.
Follow the steps to activate!
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Tamil interface for WordPress
I have happy news to all our Tamil bloggers. Today WordPress has given Tamil interface for its site.
Last 5 days nearly 20 of our translators translated nearly 3000 strings as volunteers. It
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